Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) — Just Eat Takeaway.com NV agreed to sell its 33% stake in Latin American joint venture iFood to Prosus NV for as much as 1.8 billion euros ($1.8 billion).

The deal fulfills a pledge to investors and will bolster Just Eat’s balance sheet, albeit at a price below a previous offer for the shares. The company said last year that a 2.3 billion-euro offer for its iFood holdings was inadequate. 

Just Eat shares jumped 29% in London on Friday to 1,808 pence apiece. The stock had declined 66% this year through Thursday’s close. Prosus gained less than 1% in Amsterdam.

“A year later, and it has accepted a material haircut,” Jefferies analyst Giles Thorne wrote in a report. “While it probably would rather have kept the stake, the ‘corporate finance’ benefits of the sale were obviously too big to ignore.”

After pandemic lockdowns drove a surge in orders for food delivery companies, they have had to contend with a slowdown in growth amid easing restrictions. They’ve been challenged by rising inflation biting consumers and a shift in investor appetite away from loss-making tech companies.

Prosus has been in talks to increase its ownership of iFood as far back as 2020, Bloomberg News reported at the time. It will fully own the Brazilian food delivery company following the transaction announced on Friday.

Prosus will pay 1.5 billion euros in cash when the deal closes and as much as an additional 300 million euros will be paid in the next 12 months depending on the company’s performance, Just Eat said in a statement on Friday. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. 

Just Eat said it will use the proceeds to strengthen its balance sheet and repay debt, and the company said it’s also still pursuing a partial or full sale of its Grubhub business. The Amsterdam-based company is looking for ways to cope with slowing order growth that’s hit the delivery industry this year.

Read More: Just Eat Takeaway Records 3 Billion-Euro Hit on Grubhub 

 

(Updates throughout with context on deal)

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(Bloomberg) — Three years after the very divisive series finale of Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy world has returned to HBO with House of the Dragon.

All the blood, sex, violence, plotting, and dragons that made its predecessor such a pop culture phenomenon are back. Bloomberg Pursuits got an early preview of the first six episodes, which made it clear that fans won’t be disappointed. My own lingering dismay from the Game of Thrones ending was all but wiped from memory, and I predict the new series will make Sunday night on HBO necessary viewing again.

The show is set some 200 years before Thrones, at a time when the white-blond Targaryen dynasty have full control of the Iron Throne due to their fire-breathing dragons. The world feels a bit smaller than in Thrones, as the plot solely follows the Targaryen family’s bloody turmoils instead of jumping among all the Great Houses and the idiosyncratic locations viewers got used to in the first show’s opening credits. Still, the coloring and costumes are brighter and more opulent. This is an era in which the Targaryens flaunt their wealth, power, and status. There’s no time for the drab colors and people you might find at Winterfell, for example. 

This is the opposite of a slow burn. The show sets up intrigue and violence within the Dragonlord house from the start. In the opening minutes, the dying King Jaehaerys Targaryen calls together the Great Council to decide on his successor. The choices are down to two of his grandchildren: Rhaenys (Eve Best) or her younger cousin Viserys (Paddy Considine, in top form).

The choice puts Viserys on the Iron Throne and makes Rhaenys the “Queen that never was.” But the sticky problem of succession pops up again for Viserys: He’s not particularly healthy, and there’s plenty of plotting as to whom the crown should pass after he dies.

An early option is Viserys’s first-born daughter Princess Rhaenyra. She’s played by Milly Alcock as a mischievous teenager and with cool detachment as an adult, by Emma D’Arcy, in what are sure to be breakout performances by both actors. Rhaenyra is smart, capable, and a fine dragon rider. Still, Rhaenyra is a woman. As her cousin Rhaenys reminds her, “Men would sooner put the realm to the torch than see a woman ascend to the Iron Throne.” The misogyny is real at King’s Landing, although the showrunners have promised that this iteration won’t depict graphic on-screen sexual violence.

Further contenders for the throne include Daemon, Viserys’s loose-cannon brother, played with a malevolent glee by a scene-stealing Matt Smith of Doctor Who fame. He’s got miles of charisma but lacks the temperament to rule. Another is his nephew Aegon, the son of Viserys by his much-younger second wife. That’s a lot of platinum wigs!

Not in the running for the Iron Throne but incredibly important to the plot is Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey as a teenager and Olivia Cooke as a grown-up). Alicent is both a victim of the plotting by her father (Rhys Ifans as the Hand to the King) and a driver of the narrative, going from a friend to a foil for Rhaenyra.

Showrunner Ryan Condal has called the show “Succession with dragons,” as if the Roy family members were all blond and more disposed to literal backstabbing than the metaphorical kind. The violent delights have violent ends: There are some incredibly disturbing deaths in the show, which viewers have come to expect, including one in the first episode that’s sure to light up Twitter.

At its core, the show offers more of the same. But when Game of Thrones was good, it was great. The showrunners don’t seem to be interested so far in deviating much from the formula that made it such a popular program.

One of the main differences is the primary focus on the female perspective in Westeros. The show examines its lead characters’ roles as mothers and wives, queens or pawns. For example, there’s an uncomfortable scene when the king is offered a young girl for a new wife as a way to cement alliances; she tells him her mother says she doesn’t have to have sex with him until she’s 14. More than once in the show, husbands are made to choose whether or not to cut a child out of their wives’ wombs during difficult labor, knowing that the resulting blood loss would kill the women. This is difficult viewing as characters struggle with, and embrace, the roles given to them by their lots in life.

House of Dragons captures the magic of the earlier seasons of Game of Thrones by focusing on the politicking and feuds via captivating conversations in the throne room and king’s council. These characters are new, but the world of Westeros isn’t. It’s great to be back.

At House of the Dragon’s core, it’s a Shakespearean family drama about the cruelty that fathers and daughters and brothers and sisters will inflict on each other in the quest for power. Life in Westeros is nasty, brutish, and short, as Thomas Hobbes suggested is the natural state, and the show is suitably dark. In this series, there is very little light to the shade, and I miss a character with comedy chops, like Tyrion Lannister. All the characters save Daemon seem to take themselves and their legacies extremely seriously. 

A montage in the first episode says everything for me. It’s an unsubtle metaphor in which footage of knights bloodying each other in a joust is interspersed with scenes of a woman giving birth. It shows how, for men and women, blood and death is the ultimate outcome, even if you can command dragons with a single word.

House of the Dragon will debut on Aug. 21.

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(Bloomberg) — Here’s the key business news from London-listed companies this morning.

Joules Group Plc: The British lifestyle company’s trading has “softened materially” since its last update as a result of warm and dry weather reducing sales of its rain-proof and warm clothes and accessories and as weaker consumer sentiment requires heavy discounting to entice sales.

• The group now expects a full-year adjusted loss before tax “significantly below” current market expectations and is in discussions with its bank on a waiver of certain covenants on its facilities

The Financial Conduct Authority: The UK watchdog warned buy-now-pay-later companies that their adverts could mislead customers if they emphasize the benefits of the products without also warning of risks like the consequences of missing payments or possible impacts on credit scores.

• The regulator says adverts, including promotions by social media influencers, could mislead customers, especially as people are making tough choices about how to pay for products in the cost of living crisis

Kingspan Group Plc: The insulation maker says inflationary pressures have eased in recent months, but the impact of shorter energy supply over winter will be something they’ll have to monitor closely.

• The company posted more than 4 billion euros of revenue in the first-half of the year for the first time, saying it has been able to navigate “large” input cost increases with only a little impact on its margin

Retail Sales: Britain’s online stores drove an unexpected jump in retail sales last month, offsetting declines across much of the rest of the industry.

• The volume of goods sold in shops and on the internet unexpectedly rose 0.3% in July after a decline of 0.2% the month before, according to the latest Office for National Statistics data
• That came after consumer confidence fell to the lowest since 1974 as concerns about a recession increased and soaring inflation tightened a squeeze on household finances.

Outside The City

UK consumer confidence fell to a record low as concerns about a recession increased and soaring inflation tightened a squeeze on household finances. And the crisis of confidence is set to worsen “with the darkening days of autumn and the colder months of winter,” according to Joe Staton, client strategy director at GfK.

That’s as London’s tube network largely grinds to a halt today as workers go on strike. 

In Case You Missed It 

Listen to Bloomberg Opinion’s Javier Blas talk about the terrifying moment London paid a record price for electricity in order to keep the lights on — and how the capital will avoid a blackout this winter.

And it’s been three months since James Anderson retired from Baillie Gifford, the century-old Scottish money manager he transformed into an unlikely power-investor in global technology. Now, the Edinburgh-based stock picker is trying to adapt. 

Looking Ahead

S&P Global’s index of private-sector growth will be closely watched next week for clues about how much businesses are struggling with inflation and how that might impact the pace at which the Bank of England is raising interest rates. 

The Readout with Allegra Stratton will be back from its summer break on Aug. 30. In the meantime, here’s what Bloomberg journalists are reading this summer. 

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(Bloomberg) — Russia is likely using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine to shield its troops and equipment, undermining the safety of the plant’s operations, according to European intelligence officials.

There appears to be a deliberate effort by Russia to use the plant’s protected status as a nuclear site to provide cover to its forces, and prevent them from being attacked by Ukrainian forces, a tactic that undermines the security of the plant, said the officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

Russia has also used the wider area to rest its forces at night, and has launched long-range artillery attacks from adjacent regions, the people said, adding that it doesn’t appear that significant strikes have been launched from within the facility so far.

Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest nuclear facility, in March. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency has warned in recent days of a real risk of nuclear disaster at the facility. Moscow has been stalling international calls to grant inspectors access to the plant.

This week, the US, European Union, UK and other allies issued a joint statement warning that the “deployment of Russian military personnel and weaponry at the facility is unacceptable and disregards the safety, security and safeguards principles that all members of the IAEA have committed to respect.”

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his regular evening address to the nation that he spoke about the plant’s security with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Thursday.

“There are no objective obstacles to prevent the IAEA mission from reaching the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Today, Mr. Guterres and I discussed the parameters of this mission and the fact that it can get to the plant very quickly and quite safely in a legal way through the free territory of our state,” Zelenskiy said. “Russia must immediately and unconditionally allow IAEA representatives to the plant and also immediately and unconditionally withdraw its troops from the territory of the plant.” 

European intelligence has also assessed that Russia is likely to continue to spread disinformation falsely painting Ukraine’s actions toward the plant as reckless, the officials said. Russian state Twitter accounts have repeatedly accused Kyiv of targeting the facility, including with western weapons, and Moscow has warned of unsubstantiated false-flag operations.

The officials said that the plant’s nuclear reactors are well protected by large steel and concrete blocks, which would probably provide some protection from accidental strikes. Any damage to the reactors would likely be due to them being deliberately targeted, they added.

Russia’s goals for the plant are unclear, the officials said, but Moscow could use the energy it produces as a bargaining chip with Kyiv.

(Updates with Zelenskiy remarks starting in sixth paragraph)

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(Bloomberg) — Britain’s online stores drove an unexpected jump in retail sales last month, offering promotions to draw in consumers hit by the cost-of-living crisis.

But the figures came alongside a drop in consumer sentiment to a record low, underscoring increasing concerns about a recession and soaring inflation that are tightening a squeeze on household finances. 

The volume of goods sold in stores and on the Internet rose 0.3%, confounding predictions from economists for a small decline, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. That was driven by a 4.8% surge from web-based retailers, which offset a decline in sales of clothing, household goods and second-hand items including antiques.

“The summer sunshine brought a slight uplift in sales,” said Helen Dickinson, chief executive officer of the British Retail Consortium. “Summer clothing, air conditioning appliances and outdoor foods all benefitted from record temperatures, but most retailers will still be seeing falling volumes in the face of rising inflation.”

The figures also showed the value of retail sales rising sharply while volumes stagnate. That indicates higher prices mean that consumers are paying more to the same amount of goods.

Friday’s report caps a week of gloomy data on the economy, adding to the risk of a recession. Consumer confidence fell to the lowest since records began in 1974, the market researcher GfK said earlier Friday.

“The strain on the personal finances of many in the UK is alarming,” said Joe Staton, client strategy director at GfK. “Just making ends meet has become a nightmare. The crisis of confidence will only worsen with the darkening days of autumn and the colder months of winter.”

Real wages adjusted for inflation fell 3% in the second quarter, the sharpest pace on record. Consumer price growth broke into double digits last month for the first time since 1982. 

More concerning is the outlook for the labor market. New job vacancies fell for the first time since August 2020. That’s a sign that demand for workers may be cooling, which would remove the strongest pillar of the economy since the pandemic.

The Bank of England is focused on bringing inflation back to its 2% target and has signaled that further interest-rate increases are likely — even if those curb growth. Investors anticipate a half-point increase in the benchmark lending rate to 2.25% and rates above 3.5% by the middle of next year.

Read more:

• UK Heat Wave Boosts Sales in Shops and Spending on ‘Staycations’
• UK Real Wages are Falling at Their Fastest Pace on Record: Chart
• UK Inflation Hits Double Digits for the First Time in 40 Years
• Poorest UK Households Hit Hardest by Surge in Inflation
• UK Retailers Report Prices Rising at Sharpest Pace Since 2005
• UK Businesses Say Economic Growth Slowed to a Crawl in July

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(Bloomberg) — An Asian stock gauge fell along with US equity futures Friday and the dollar was around a one-month high, reflecting caution about the likely pace of Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes to fight inflation.

MSCI Inc.’s Asia-Pacific share index shed 0.4%, while S&P 500, Nasdaq 100 and European futures slipped. Wall Street shares posted a small advance Thursday.

A greenback gauge and Treasury yields advanced as investors parsed slightly divergent comments from Fed officials: St. Louis’s James Bullard urged another 75 basis-point move while Kansas City’s Esther George struck a more cautious tone, saying the case for hikes is strong but the pace is up for debate. 

Geopolitical tension might also be in the mix for the dollar move. Indonesian President Joko Widodo said China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin plan to be at a Group of 20 summit in Bali later this year. That sets up a showdown with US President Joe Biden and others as Russia continues its war in Ukraine.

Oil, gold and Bitcoin dropped. Later Friday, a $2 trillion options expiration could stir volatility in global markets.

Investor sentiment has been boosted over the last few weeks by expectations of slower monetary tightening on signs that high inflation is cooling. 

But hurdles remain for the 12% jump in world equities from June lows, not least the risk of entrenched global price pressures alongside economic slowdowns in the US and China.

While “lower volatility both in fixed income and in equities is starting to pull people back into the market,” events such as the Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming next week will help determine if that’s sustainable, Nicholas Colas, co-founder at DataTrek Research, said on Bloomberg Television.

Traders will pour over Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s comments at the symposium. There is already speculation he may lean against a recent loosening in financial conditions that makes it harder to curb the cost of living.

At some point in time, the Fed will acknowledge a very stark growth-inflation trade-off and will accept living with inflation, according to Ann-Katrin Petersen, senior investment strategist at BlackRock Investment Institute. 

“This established pivot is not likely in the very near term in contrast to what markets seem to be expecting right now,” she said on Bloomberg Television. “But this dovish pivot may come in 2023 from my perspective.”

Separately, Indonesia’s president said the nation could impose a tax on nickel exports this year. Shares of Asian nickel producers pushed higher.

Inflation remains the most closely-watched indicator in the second half. Will it come down gradually, or will it stay elevated, forcing the Fed to keep raising rates aggressively? Have your say in the anonymous MLIV Pulse survey.

Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

• S&P 500 futures slipped 0.3% as of 7:19 a.m. in London. The S&P 500 rose 0.2%
• Nasdaq 100 futures declined 0.4%. The Nasdaq 100 rose 0.3%
• Japan’s Topix index was up 0.2%
• South Korea’s Kospi index lost 0.5%
• Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index climbed 0.3%
• China’s Shanghai Composite index lost 0.4%
• Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index was little changed
• Euro Stoxx 50 futures slipped 0.5%

Currencies

• The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.2%
• The euro was at $1.0081, down 0.1%
• The Japanese yen was at 136.27 per dollar, down 0.3%
• The offshore yuan was at 6.8227 per dollar, down 0.3%

Bonds

• The yield on 10-year Treasuries rose three basis points to 2.92%
• Australia’s 10-year bond yield climbed eight basis points to 3.41%

Commodities

• West Texas Intermediate crude fell 0.6% to $89.97 a barrel
• Gold was at $1,755.23 an ounce, down 0.2%

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(Bloomberg) — Just Eat Takeaway.com NV agreed to sell its 33% stake in Latin American joint venture iFood to Prosus NV for as much as 1.8 billion euros ($1.8 billion). 

Prosus will pay 1.5 billion euros in cash when the deal closes and as much as an additional 300 million euros will be paid in the next 12 months depending on the company’s performance, Just Eat said in a statement on Friday. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. 

Just Eat said it will use the proceeds to strengthen its balance sheet and repay debt, and the company said it’s also still pursuing a partial or full sale of its Grubhub business. The Amsterdam-based company is looking for ways to cope with slowing order growth that’s hit the delivery industry this year, and has also announced job cuts. 

Read More: Just Eat Takeaway Records 3 Billion-Euro Hit on Grubhub 

Just Eat shares fell 3.4% in Amsterdam on Thursday to 16.66 euros apiece. The stock had declined 66% this year. Prosus fell 1.4% and has declined 13% this year. 

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(Bloomberg) — A two-year-old Shanghai-based developer of chip design software was behind an attempt to buy a British firm that regulators blocked with little explanation, the latest example of Britain’s increasing hostility toward Chinese investment.

Super Orange HK Holding Ltd. was blocked from buying Bristol-based chip design software provider Pulsic Ltd., the British Business Secretary announced in a brief statement Wednesday. But that firm is in reality controlled by little-known Shanghai UniVista Industrial Software Group, according to Hong Kong public filings and Chinese corporate data. The Shanghai firm is backed by the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund — the powerful $50 billion state-backed vehicle known within the industry as the “Big Fund.”

It’s unclear what roles Super Orange’s controlling shareholders played in the takeover attempt. Pulsic’s would-be acquirer was founded in Hong Kong in August last year by Nanjing Puxin Software, according to local filings. That firm is in turn wholly owned by UniVista, according to Chinese corporate database Tianyancha. 

UniVista was incorporated only in 2020 and describes itself as a provider of Electronic Design Automation tools to the chip industry, or software kits vital to the design of semiconductors. Its No. 2 owner was the Big Fund, which typically bankrolls promising startups in their initial stages, according to Tianyancha.

Little is known about Puxin, the UniVista subsidiary that directly controls Super Orange. The office number listed in Puxin’s legal documents didn’t exist when Bloomberg News visited the Nanjing campus listed on Thursday. Several employees at the business park said the address didn’t conform with the usual format within the location.

Read more: Secretive Chinese Committee Draws Up List to Replace U.S. Tech

Representatives for Puxin and UniVista couldn’t be reached for comment. UniVista didn’t respond to an emailed inquiry sent to its registered email account, while phone calls to its offices went unanswered. 

The US has been leaning on allies from the UK to Japan to join in efforts to block China’s chip goals. Pulsic is also a player in EDA tools, employed by leading chipmakers from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to Intel Corp. Beijing considers the sector, dominated by American firms Synopsys Inc. and Cadence Design Systems Inc., a key bottleneck in its ambitions to build a world-class semiconductor industry and wean China off US technology.

Pulsic’s would-be acquirer — Super Orange HK Holding — had a sole and founding director identified as Zhou Nuo. In December, he ceded his post to Xu Yun, Hong Kong filings showed. Xu, the former head of Cadence’s Chinese business, is now a co-CEO at UniVista.

Xu, once named one of China’s most influential female chip executives, was also a director of the very similarly named Super Orange HK Ltd., a separate entity founded in March that’s in turn wholly owned by Shanghai UniVista Technology. Her co-CEO is Pan Jianyue, who headed Synopsys Inc.’s China and Asia-Pacific business before the pair founded the other UniVista Industrial in 2021. 

Read more: UK Blocks Takeover of Design Firm Amid Chinese Security Fears

Xu and Pan harbor ambitions to not just replace American technology but build a globe-spanning operation that can go toe-to-toe with the industry’s leaders, according to an interview they gave The Paper in November.

The parent entity of Puxin — Super Orange HK Holding’s sole owner — used a UniVista email address as its registered contact information in Tianyancha.

Stopping the Super Orange acquisition is a continuation of a recent trend.

The British government worked to end China General Nuclear Power Corp.’s involvement in UK projects and Boris Johnson’s administration also blocked Huawei Technologies Co. from participating in Britain’s 5G network.

And there are similar decisions in the pipeline. Britain is probing a Chinese-led takeover of Newport Wafer Fab, which owns the UK’s largest semiconductor plant, with a decision due in September. MPs are also calling for a ban on the sale of closed-circuit television cameras from the Chinese firms Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. and Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co.

China’s Vast Blueprint for Tech Supremacy Over U.S.: QuickTake

(Updates with details of UniVista’s aspirations from the 10th paragraph)

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(Bloomberg) — The billionaire founder of Paytm faces a crucial test of investor confidence Friday, when shareholders will decide whether they want him at the helm of a fintech pioneer that made one of the worst debuts in Indian history.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s role as the chief executive officer is among the items to be voted on at the company’s annual general meeting held virtually this afternoon. A proxy advisory firm last week recommended that shareholders replace the founder as CEO, citing concerns about his ability to reverse losses at the payments provider.

Paytm, the poster boy for India’s tech startups, has lost more than 60% of its value since its high-profile initial public offering in November as it has struggled to convince investors of its earnings potential. In an interview last month, Sharma, 44, said Paytm is set to become India’s first internet company to hit $1 billion in annual revenue and pledged a shift from growth toward profitability.

Shareholders should vote against Sharma’s reappointment, and the board must bring in a professional to the role, Institutional Investor Advisory Services India Ltd. said last week. Before listing, Sharma, on several instances, publicly talked about the company turning profitable, and yet it hasn’t happened even at an operational level, the firm said.

Paytm, listed on the bourses as One 97 Communications Ltd., counts Ant Group Co.’s Antfin (Netherlands) Holding BV., SoftBank Group Corp. and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board among its top shareholders. Of the dozen analysts covering the firm, six have a buy rating, while three each recommend hold and sell on the stock.

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(Bloomberg) — Private equity company Battery Ventures is reinvesting in a software company it exited just five months ago.

Boston, MA-based Battery will buy a 10% stake in Forterro, a European business software provider that it sold to Partners Group Holding AG in March at a 1 billion-euro ($1 billion) valuation. Forterro’s value will be unchanged by the new investment, Battery said in a statement. 

While private equity firms do sometimes reinvest in the same companies, Battery’s rapid recommitment is due to one of its funds nearing the end of its life. The firm originally owned Forterro through a 12-year-old vehicle that now needs to return money to investors, said Dave Tabors, private equity partner at Battery. 

“That fund can’t support another 5- to 7-year timeline to create the next step in the value journey,” he said in an interview. Battery is reinvesting via a recently-raised $530 million fund. Forterro is aggressively shifting to a subscription model for its software, which will drive recurring revenues, and will also have more capacity for acquisitions with two private equity backers, Tabors added.

Battery decided not to use a continuation vehicle to extend the holding in Forterro. Last year there were $62 billion-worth of such deals, where managers brought in new investors while offering exits for early backers, according to data from Greenhill & Co. That’s more than double the amount seen in either 2019 or 2020. 

That option was quickly discarded as it would not have given Forterro access to fresh capital, said Tabors.

 

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