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Good morning, and happy Friday.
Ride, Eagles, ride!
The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority had an unlikely hero ride to its rescue: Fanduel, the sports gambling site. FanDuel stepped in to help restore service along the agency’s express line to Lincoln Financial Field stadium during last night’s Philadelphia Eagles’ home opener against the Dallas Cowboys. FanDuel paid as much as $80,000 to get the route back up and running for the game. Sports fans may be growing tired of the bombardment of sports-gambling messaging during their favorite games: One recent study by the University of Bristol estimated that gambling logos and ads are featured in major US sporting events as frequently as every 13 seconds. But last night, at least, the words “brought to you by FanDuel” took on new meaning for Eagles fans. |
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Photo via Paul Weaver/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom |
Rejoice, millennials: The CEO of Lowe’s has good news to share.
In
an interview with Barron’s published Friday, the home improvement retailer’s top boss, Marvin Ellison, said a rebound is inevitable in the something’s-gotta-give US housing market, and that his company is well-positioned for the much-awaited development when it comes to pass. On the other hand, Ellison also stressed that if a rebound doesn’t happen, Lowe’s will be well-positioned just the same. Our advice to weary would-be homebuyers: Take the hope, and leave the caveats behind.
Eyes on the Prize
An ultra-soft housing market has largely placed a heavy lid on the home improvement sector, though Lowe’s isn’t the first in the space predicting a tilt in buyers’ favor. In its
second-quarter earnings call last month, Home Depot stuck by its full-year guidance even though its sales figures missed analyst expectations through its first two quarters — essentially betting a housing turnaround in the second half of the year would spur more business. Ellison agreed, saying that if a possible cut in interest rates at the Federal Reserve’s next meeting later this month coincides with mortgage rates dropping below 6%, it will likely have a “psychological effect” on would-be buyers and spur movement in the housing market.
If the Fed doesn’t cut rates, Ellison says a rebound is still a matter of when, not if. Citing internal Lowe’s data, Ellison said the US housing market will need 18 million new homes by 2033 to keep up with demand, adding, “We know the inflection in housing is coming. We just don’t know when.”
Whether that’s a long time or a short time, Ellison says Lowe’s is poised for success:
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Like Home Depot hinted in its recent earnings report, Lowe’s says it will succeed even if the market thaws later rather than sooner, thanks to a rapid rise in home equity among existing owners that could be reinvested into home improvement projects. Ellison called it a “locked-in” mindset (as in, locked-in to low mortgage rates from a prior era) that could be fueled by home-equity lines of credit.
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Ellison also said the company has pivoted to expand its market to professional contractors, highlighting the company’s $1.3 billion acquisition of Artisan Design Group in June and the $8.8 billion acquisition of Foundation Building Materials last month.
Home Improvement Improvement: Ellison said the pro market now accounts for roughly 30% of the company’s revenue, up from 19% in 2018. It’s essentially a bet on a rebound in the housing market — one that Lowe’s is not alone in making. Home Depot has also
made splashy acquisitions in the space recently, and said in its most recent earnings report that the pro market accounts for 45% of its sales. Fittingly for the home improvement retail industry, Lowe’s and Home Depot both seem focused on keeping up with the Joneses.
Written by Brian Boyle |
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Photo via Pacaso |
Grammy-winning artist will.i.am passed on investing $200K in Airbnb in 2010. It’d be worth $100M+ today.
Now, the
investors behind Venmo and Uber are backing another real estate disruptor. And this time, you can invest.
Meet
Pacaso. Created by a former Zillow exec who sold his first venture for $120M, Pacaso brings co-ownership to the $1.3T vacation home industry.
They’ve generated $1B+ worth of vacation home transactions & fees across 2,000+ buyers. That’s good for more than $110M in gross profits since their inception less than 5 years ago. They’ve even reserved their Nasdaq ticker, PCSO.
And you can join them today for just $2.90/share. But don’t wait too long.
Invest in Pacaso before the opportunity ends September 18.*
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Tesla’s robotaxi app
went live this week and quickly became Apple’s No. 1 travel app. But only a select group of investors and influencers in Austin, Texas, can actually call a car through the app. Everyone else has the option to join a waitlist and, well, wait.
So far, Tesla has launched limited rideshare services in Austin and the Bay Area, and it’s looking to expand into Florida, Arizona and Nevada. But regulatory hurdles have slowed down the EV-maker’s plans — in the Bay Area, its cars still have a driver in the cab (womp, womp). Also, Tesla is using Model Y SUVs for rideshare rather than the promised Cybercab, which faces extra scrutiny for not having a steering wheel or pedals.
But Tesla is trying to put the pedal to the metal on its robotaxi plans as investors look to the company’s robotic future to make Tesla less reliant on EVs.
The Writing’s on the Wheel
Sales of EVs, which still make up the bulk of Tesla’s business, have been slipping. Americans bought 6% fewer EVs last quarter than they did in the same quarter the year before, Cox Automotive found. And Tesla’s sales fell faster than the broader industry’s, dipping 13% as it continued to lose market share. CEO Elon Musk warned investors in July that the car company has a “few rough quarters ahead” as pressures on the EV market bear down:
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In addition to Americans simply buying fewer EVs than anticipated, President Trump has pushed pro-gas policies — like nixing penalties for missing fuel-efficiency targets. At the end of this month, the $7,500 tax credit that Americans have leveraged for about 15 years will disappear.
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Without the discount, analysts expect would-be new EV buyers to check out used EVs, which are selling for a
relative bargain compared with gas-powered cars. One RBC analyst told Barron’s that late-model used EVs sell for about 55% of their original price, compared with 75% for gas vehicles.
New Direction: Automakers that went full-throttle into EVs have been tapping the brakes and shifting their focus back to gas cars. Tesla doesn’t have that fallback option, and considering it hasn’t come out with a new EV model since the Cybertruck, it seems distracted from its main electric lineup. Instead, Tesla’s all-in on all-things-robo with Elon Musk writing on X Monday that he
expects 80% of Tesla’s value to eventually come from its “Optimus” AI-powered robots. But first, robotaxis.
Written by Jamie Wilde |
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Photo via PCM Encore |
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Why is a skateboard a better investment in 2025 than private equity? Because you can flip it.
A sluggish PE market this year,
held back in the second quarter by tariff-induced uncertainty, has left some buyout firms in a bind when it comes to returning cash to their investors. Nevertheless, alternative assets giant Carlyle and investment bank Goldman Sachs have come up with some Tony Hawk-worthy tricks to make the best of the moment.
Settle for a Haircut
Last year marked the first time since Bain & Co. started tracking data in 2005 that the private equity industry shrank, with assets under management declining 2% to $4.7 trillion. A slowdown in the sector left investors, who saw a $3 trillion backlog of aging, unsold stakes, wary. While many PE firms are under pressure to convert those stakes into liquidity in time for the approaching maturity dates of their funds, options for exits have stalled. IPOs in the US remain relatively subdued,
according to EY, well off their 2021 peak. And the M&A market is similarly muted, with global dealmaking down 9% year-over-year in the first half of 2025,
according to PwC.
This is not to say extra-motivated PE firms haven’t found ways to exit. EY
said there were 215 “significant exit transactions” in the first half of the year worth $308 billion, the most in the PE sector since the first half of 2022. But a lot of those stakes were ditched amid a newfound willingness to accept a loss: 40% of buyout shops told EY they’re willing to absorb a 5% to 10% haircut on long-held assets, while another 24% said they’d take a 10% to 20% haircut. Not everyone is feeling the heat, though, as two Wall Street giants are positioning themselves to capitalize on the logjam:
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PE and alternative assets giant Carlyle Group said Thursday that it raised $20 billion for a new fund that will buy aging private equity stakes off investors at a discount. The secondaries fund will be housed in Carlyle’s AlpInvest Unit and succeeds an $8 billion fund closed in 2020, when the secondary PE market was smaller.
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At the same time, investment bank Goldman Sachs has been pitching a $15 billion new iteration of its flagship secondaries fund to investors, Bloomberg
reported Wednesday. It’s also planning a $10 billion fund that offers so-called hybrid capital, or a mix of debt and equity that can finance companies owned by PE shops, which can pass the cash on to their parents via dividends.
Take It From the Expert: In an
interview with the Capital Allocators podcast earlier this summer, Bain private equity chair Hugh MacArthur called the liquidity issues facing the PE industry right now “unprecedented” and cautioned that it’s an overlooked problem. “In many ways, it’s not fully appreciated because we’re not in some global recession, there aren’t asset bubbles that have burst,” he said. He warned that there are roughly 15,000 companies currently held in buyout portfolios that correspond to “$1.8 trillion worth of value that LPs are kind of expecting to see back really, really soon.” The total exit volume of the entire buyout world last year, he noted, was $600 billion, meaning the logjam amounts to three years worth of exits.
Written by Sean Craig |
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Riposa in Pace: Italian designer Giorgio Armani, who turned his namesake luxury brand into a multibillion dollar empire and whose “power suits” were a 1980s Wall Street fashion staple,
passed away.
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Your Lucky Numbers: The Powerball jackpot has
climbed to $1.7 billion, the third-biggest US lottery jackpot in history, and the next drawing takes place Saturday night (mind you, your odds are 1 in 292.2 million).
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Own Shares in a Privately Held Company? Poor planning can cost you big. Miss the deadline for exercising stock options? The grant lapses. Fail to meet important tax deadlines? Pay thousands in extra taxes. Join
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Disclaimer
*This is a paid advertisement for Pacaso's Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at
invest.pacaso.com. Reserving the ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public.
Listing on the Nasdaq is subject to approvals. |
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