Category: Laptops

• Ben Francis is a university dropout and former Pizza Hut delivery driver who founded Gymshark.
• He founded the sportswear label in 2012 and turned it into a billion-dollar company.
• The 30-year-old is up seven places to 184th on this year’s Sunday Times Rich List.

A decade ago Ben Francis had dropped out of college and was working as a Pizza Hut delivery driver. He’s now worth £900 million, or $1.1 billion, putting him up seven places to 184th on this year’s Sunday Times Rich List.

After leaving Aston University in Birmingham, England, Francis cofounded the sportswear company Gymshark.

The 30-year-old has since grown the business into a billion-dollar company, while his own wealth has soared to three times that of singer Ed Sheeran.

Writing for The Sunday Times in 2022, Francis noted some of Gymshark’s major milestones, including achieving “unicorn” status in 2020, which is when a company hits a valuation of at least $1 billion, “with no prior funding.”

He said the company had also expanded into the US, where it now has more than 100 employees in its Denver office.

Gymshark was his seventh attempt at setting up a successful business, he wrote in The Sunday Times: “I just wanted a website that would transact.”

So when Gymshark made its first profit of just £2, Francis said it felt like they’d “won the lottery.”

He and his cofounder, university friend Lewis Morgan, used everything they had to pay for a stand at the BodyPower Expo in 2013.

The pair were turning over about £300 a day at that time, Francis wrote. But after the expo, Gymshark was suddenly making sales of £30,000 in 30 minutes and he realized it could be something big.

The brand now has more than six million followers on Instagram.

 

Francis previously shared his morning routine with Insider, which includes waking up before 6 a.m. and “doing the same thing to the minute every day.”

The Gymshark cofounder also received an MBE, a British royal honour, earlier this year for his services to business.

Francis did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• The Pentagon overvalued the cost of weapons sent to Ukraine by $3 billion, Reuters reported.
• Biden’s administration could now send more weapons without having to get budget approval from Congress.
• The error was caused by the Pentagon using replacement costs to value the arms.

The Pentagon overvalued the cost of weapons it sent to Ukraine by $3 billion, in a blunder that may allow the US to send further weaponry to the besieged country to help in its fight against Putin’s forces, Reuters reported.

Two senior defense officials told Reuters on Thursday that the error was due to the Pentagon valuing the weapons at their current replacement costs rather than their depreciated values.

One of the sources added that the figure could grow even higher as the investigation continues.

“We’ve discovered inconsistencies in how we value the equipment that we’ve given,” one official also told Reuters.

The accounting error could enable the Department of Defense to send more weapons to Ukraine without the Biden administration needing to get budget approval from Congress, Reuters reported.

The officials said that Congress was to be informed of the issue on Thursday.

Anastasia Vlasova for The Washington Post via Getty Images

US Senator Roger Wicker, the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Reuters that “the Department of Defense’s change in evaluating the costs of arms sent to Ukraine is a major mistake.”

“Its effect would be to underestimate future needs for our European allies. Our priority should be a Ukrainian victory over Putin. Unilaterally altering military aid calculations is an attempt at deception and undermines this goal,” he added.

According to the German research institute the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the US promised just over 71 billion euros, which is around $77 billion, in humanitarian, financial, and military aid to Ukraine between January 24, 2022, and February 24, 2023.

Of this, just over 43 billion euros, or around $46.5 billion, was for military support.

• Spirit Airlines apologized to a Puerto Rican family after refusing to let them fly, CBS News reported.
• The family was traveling to the US territory from LA, and their toddler did not have a passport.
• A passport is not required to travel between Puerto Rico and the US mainland. 

A Puerto Rican family traveling from Los Angeles to Puerto Rico was stopped from boarding a Spirit Airlines flight because the parents’ child did not have a US passport. An American passport, however, is not required to travel between the US territory and the US mainland. 

Late last month at Los Angeles International Airport, Marivi Roman Torres, her husband, and their two-year-old son reached the Spirit Airlines ticket counter after planning to visit family on the island, they were told they needed to show their passports.

Roman Torres said the agent told her that was an international flight. “I told her, ‘No, Puerto Rico is not another country. It is a US territory,’” she told CBS News. 

While she and her husband showed their passports anyway, they told the Spirit agent their toddler did not have one after she asked to see it.  

The employee then offered to either refund the flight or reschedule for when the family could acquire a passport for the young child.

Roman Torres asked, “Is there anyone else I can talk to? Can we call customer service together?” 

Calling the Spirit staff “completely inflexible,” the family subsequently bought JetBlue tickets at a higher price. A JetBlue airline employee told the family passports were not needed to travel to the island in the Caribbean, “I’m like, ‘I know!’” Roman Torres told CBS. 

After the incident, the airline said in a statement that they “sincerely apologized” for the inconvenience after CBS News contacted Spirit. The airline added they had refunded their tickets and provided travel vouchers for future flights. 

“Spirit has a long history of serving Puerto Rico. In this specific case, an agent at LAX who is new to the position misunderstood the identification requirements. We are providing the agent with additional coaching and reiterating proper procedure,” the statement said. 

Even so, Roman Torres said she would no longer book with the airline “My trust was broken there on something that should not have happened.”

US citizens can travel to several US territories without a passport

In a video news report posted on Twitter by CBS national correspondent David Begnaud — which has been viewed more than 800,000 times as of Friday — social media users heaped criticisms on the budget airline. 

“How does the airline agent and the supervisor not know that you don’t need a passport to travel to Puerto Rico? You learn that Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the U.S.A. in the 3rd Grade,” one Twitter user wrote. 

—David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) May 18, 2023

 

Those born in Puerto Rico are US citizens, although Puerto Ricans cannot vote in US presidential elections. Rights groups have urged for more equal protections for residents of Puerto Rico under the US Constitution.

US citizens can travel to several US territories beyond the 50 states without a passport, including the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, according to the US government.

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• Return on assets (ROA) is a key gauge of a company’s profitability.
• The ROA ratio measures a company’s net income relative to its total assets.
• A good ROA depends on the company and industry, but 5% or higher is considered good.

Return on assets (ROA) is a ratio that measures a company’s profitability relative to its total assets. It shows how well (or poorly) a company is using everything it owns — from machinery to vehicles and intellectual property — to earn money.

What does ROA mean?

ROA is one way to measure an individual company’s performance, by seeing if the ratio has been increasing or decreasing over time. A rising ROA indicates improving efficiency, while an ROA that is falling suggests a company might be spending too much on equipment and other assets relative to the profits it is earning from those investments.

Investors or managers can use ROA to assess the general health of the company to see how efficiently it’s being run and how competitive it is. Investors often use ROA in deciding whether to put money into a company and evaluate its potential for returns relative to others in the same industry.

“ROA is used by investors to see how a company’s profitability, relative to its assets, has changed over time and how it compares to its peers,” says Michelle Katzen, managing director at HCR Wealth Advisors. “The ROA is one indicator that expresses a company’s ability to generate money from its assets.”

Return on assets formula

The basic return on assets formula is to divide a company’s net income by its average total assets, and then multiply the result by 100 to convert the final figure into a percentage. For non-financial companies, the formula can be a bit different.

Rachel Mendelson/Insider

Let’s break it down:

• Net income: Revenue minus cost of goods sold minus expenses
• Average total assets: The total assets on a company’s balance sheet at the end of the current year plus the total assets at the end of the previous year, divided by two

While this formula is the most popular, it’s not the only one used to determine a company’s ROA. Katzen says for non-financial companies, it can be helpful to add back interest expenses because of the inconsistency that can come from debt and equity capital being segregated.

“The values can differ if the formula is changed,” says Adam Lynch, senior quantitative analyst at Schwab Equity Ratings. “Often these alternate versions vary the unit of time used in the calculation.”

ROA Example

Here’s an example of how to use data from Nike’s balance sheets to figure its ROA for fiscal 2021

• First, find Nike’s total assets at the end of fiscal 2021, which ended in May: $37.7 billion
• Next, find Nike’s total assets at the end of fiscal 2020: $31.3 billion
• Add those together and divide by two to get average assets: $34.5 billion
• Divide its 2021 net income ($5.7 billion) by average assets ($34.5 billion) and then multiply the result by 100, which gives you 16.5%

So putting it all together, your formula looks like this when you plug in all the values:

ROA = (5.7/34.5)*100 = 0.1652 or 16.5% 

What is a good ROA? 

A “good” ROA depends on the company, the time frame of the calculation, and a few other factors. “It’s all relative,” says Lynch. “Better than your competition is what I’d aim for. Generally, you would compare competitive companies or industries.”

As a benchmark, though, an ROA of 5% or better is generally considered to be acceptable.

“Generally speaking, an ROA of 5% or better is considered ‘good,’” Katzen says. “But it is important to consider a company’s ROA in the context of competitors in the same industry, the same sector and of similar size.”

ROA vs. ROE

ROA is one of two primary measures managers and investors use to analyze a company’s profitability level. The other is return on equity (ROE). Both provide a view of how effective a company is at using the money put into it to generate earnings.

The main difference between the two is that ROE tells investors how much income a company generates relative to each dollar of equity value. The formulas are similar. For ROE, the basic calculation is to divide net annual income by shareholders’ equity, or the claim shareholders have on a company’s assets, after its debts are paid.

“The main difference between ROA and ROE is the consideration of a company’s debt,” Katzen says. “When calculating ROE you subtract any liabilities the company has, utilizing net assets (or shareholders equity) instead of total assets.”

The bottom line

ROA is an important measure of a company’s return on investments. It shows how much profit is being generated relative to all of its assets. The higher the number, the greater the return.

For investors, ROA can be used in conjunction with other metrics (including ROE, which measures profit relative to equity value) to gain insight into a company’s efficiency. It can be used to assess an individual company’s performance over time or to evaluate it relative to similar companies in the same industry.

“The ROA is one indicator that expresses a company’s ability to generate money from its assets,” Katzen says. “Generally speaking, the higher the ROA, the more effective a company is at generating income for investors. The more income a company generates, the more likely the investment will appreciate.”

• Many drivers say long electric vehicle charge time is a barrier to them adopting the cars.
• Startup Ample says battery swapping could be faster than filling your car up with gas.
• See how Ample’s next-gen station could ‘charge’ your EV with a simple, automated swap. 

Battery swapping — taking an electric vehicle battery out of the car once it’s out of charge, and replacing it with a fully charged battery — isn’t a brand new concept, and has had a challenging journey over the past several years. But the idea of getting your electric car a full “charge” in just a matter of minutes has gotten swapping some more recent momentum.

Charging an electric car can take a while, depending on the type of charger a driver uses. In your own garage with a standard plug, or maybe at your office, it might take 8 hours. At faster plugs out in public, you might be waiting at least 20 minutes with a Level 3 charger, or maybe an hour or two with a Level 2.

Regardless, it’s no question that charging currently takes a little bit longer than fueling up a gas-powered car at a gas station. 

That’s where battery swapping could come into play, and startup Ample is eager to get automakers on board with the idea. It’d essentially mean a driver buys an electric vehicle but subscribes to the battery, Ample CEO Khaled Hassounah told Insider.

The upfront cost of a new EV (relatively high, on average) could be brought down if a buyer only has to pay for the vehicle itself, and not the pricey battery.

• US stocks dropped on Tuesday as the debt ceiling deadline quickly approaches with no deal yet to be had.
• President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy were scheduled to continue their negotiations on Tuesday.
• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that “time is running out” on a debt ceiling agreement.

US stocks fell on Tuesday as investors await any progress on a potential debt ceiling deal as the deadline of June 1 quickly approaches.

President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy were set to meet later today at 3 p.m. to further negotiations on a potential debt ceiling deal, and time is running out as Biden prepares to travel to Asia for a foreign policy trip.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that “time is running out” and that the debt ceiling showdown is already impacting Americans.

“Every single day that Congress does not act, we are experiencing increased economic costs that could slow down the US economy,” Yellen said in prepared remarks to a banking conference on Tuesday. “We are already seeing the impacts of brinksmanship: investors have become more reluctant to hold government debt that matures in early June.”

Also weighing on stocks on Tuesday were earnings results from Home Depot, which were mixed with analyst estimates and lighter-than-expected guidance as home improvement projects become smaller and smaller. 

Here’s where US indexes stood shortly after the 9:30 a.m. ET opening bell on Tuesday:

Here’s what else is happening this morning:

In commodities, bonds and crypto:

• West Texas Intermediate crude oil jumped 0.28% to $71.31 per barrel. Brent crude, oil’s international benchmark, rose 0.27% to $75.43.
• Gold fell 0.44% to $2,013.70 per ounce.
• The yield on the 10-year Treasury jumped 4 basis points to 3.54%.
• Bitcoin dropped 0.35% to $27,081, while ether rose 0.15% to $1,819. 

• US stocks were mixed on Monday as traders digested the latest debt ceiling news. 
• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said she sees progress being made. 
• The S&P 500 was trying to notch a win after two straight losing sessions. 

US stocks were mixed on Monday as markets assessed reports suggesting some movement is being made in Washington on bridging the political gap needed to raise the $31 trillion debt ceiling and prevent the country from slamming into a debt default. 

The S&P 500 was hoping to notch its first gain after two losing sessions and following two back-to-back weekly declines. 

The Biden administration and Republican lawmakers are making progress in their negotiations over spending and raising the debt limit and the talks could lead to a deal, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Saturday, according to The Wall Street Journal. Yellen has warned of major damage to the economy if the US were to miss meeting its debt obligations.  

Meanwhile, unnamed sources told The Financial Times that issues in focus between negotiators had narrowed, suggesting a possible agreement was taking shape. Biden is expected to resume talks over the debt limit on Tuesday, according to multiple reports. 

Here’s where US indexes stood shortly after the 9:30 a.m. opening bell on Monday: 

“Over the short-term, the stock market is stuck until we reach a debt ceiling resolution and until we see more clarity from the regional banking sector, which are the two factors weighing on stocks right now. Markets are anxious for a debt ceiling solution and the markets are also hoping that the Fed pauses its rate hikes at the June meeting.

“We expect volatility as we move closer to the June 1 debt ceiling deadline and while we expect a deal to be reached at the 11th hour, we view any near-term pullbacks as buying opportunities,” 

Brad Bernstein, managing director at UBS Wealth Management, said in a Monday note.  

“Even with the headwinds facing the markets and the economy, we are closer to the beginning of the next bull market. We expect the Fed to cut interest rates by early next year, which historically has been a reliable indicator for the start of a bull market.”

Here’s what else is happening today:

In commodities, bonds, and crypto:

• 19 Republican states accused JPMorgan of closing bank accounts on political or religious grounds.
• In a letter to CEO Jamie Dimon, they say the bank asked questions about religion and politics.
• The attorneys general wanted JPMorgan to participate in a diversity survey linked to free speech.

Republican attorneys general from 19 states have accused JPMorgan Chase of closing accounts and discriminating against customers due to their political or religious beliefs, a report says.

In a letter sent to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Republicans representing 19 states said the bank had canceled major organizations’ checking accounts and had asked screening questions focused on religion and politics before reinstating them.

The attorneys general said JPMorgan “abruptly closed” the checking account of the National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF), a non-profit, before a letter informing it about the decision had been delivered.

The complaint said that an employee at the bank eventually told the group that JPMorgan would restore the NCRF’s account if it provided a list of its donors, a list of the political candidates it intended to support, and details of the criteria used to determine its support and endorsements.

“The bank’s brazen attempt to condition critical services on a customer passing some unarticulated religious or political litmus test flies in the face of Chase’s antidiscrimination policies. Worse, it flies in the face of basic American values of fairness and equality,” the signatories of the letter said. 

The letter was signed by Daniel Cameron of Kentucky and Steve Marshall of Alabama, and co-signed by their counterparts in States including Florida, Georgia and Texas.

In March, treasurers from 14 Republican states also wrote to Dimon with similar claims, The Journal reported.

JPMorgan was also accused of declining a proposal to participate in a survey for the Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index, which measured a company’s respect for “freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief as a standard part of doing business,” per its website. JPMorgan received a score of 15% for the index in 2022.

Further, the letter claimed JPMorgan asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to ignore a proposal for the bank to disclose its policy for closing accounts.

A JPMorgan representative told The Journal: “We have never and would never exit a client relationship due to their political or religious affiliation.”

JPMorgan didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider, made outside normal working hours.

• More than 3 million content creators are now signed up to subscription-based platform OnlyFans.
• CEO Ami Gan said it’s identified Latin America and Australia as future growth markets. 
• Gan said there’d been a “huge uptick” in creators joining last year, with the total up almost 40%. 

The number of creators signed up to OnlyFans surged by about 40% last year, bringing the total to more than 3 million for the subscription platform that mostly features adult content. 

“We’ve noticed a huge uptick in creators as well as fans joining the platform and we attribute that to OnlyFans is very much a global business, we’re in over 100 countries,”  CEO Ami Gan told the Web Summit in Rio de Janeiro last week.

The company is now setting its sights on Latin America and Australia to further increase its numbers. 

“We’re looking at growth for the business and Latin America is a huge part of that,” Gan said. “We’re seeing Latin America is a massive growth region for us and see that opportunity for creators to get exposure to a global audience.”

Gan said OnlyFans, which had revenues of close to $1 billion in 2021, has also identified Australia and some parts of Europe as growth regions too.

The owner of OnlyFans, Leo Radvinsky, has made more than $500 million from the platform since 2020. He took control of its parent company, Fenix International, in 2018 for an undisclosed amount two years after it was founded by British entrepreneur Tim Stokely. 

Gan, who joined the company in 2020, had been chief marketing officer before she was tapped as CEO in late 2021 when Stokely sold his stake and stepped down. 

Are you an OnlyFans employee or have insight to share? Contact Jyoti Mann at jmann@insider.com or Twitter DM at @jyoti_mann1

• Elon Musk is finally ready to share his Twitter mess with someone else.
• The billionaire has found a new CEO to succeed him, but the mess they’ll need to address is huge.
• Revenue challenges, advertiser concerns and an identity crisis weigh on the company.

It’s been a long time coming but Elon Musk is finally ready to do it: he’s about to hand over his Twitter mess to someone else.

On Thursday, the billionaire announced that he had hired a new CEO to take the reins at the social-media company. There are few clues about who it is other than the fact it may be a “she,” who will take over from Musk in six weeks. 

At this stage, it’s uncertain who this could be. An early frontrunner is Linda Yaccarino, an advertising executive who has resigned from her role at NBCUniversal, CNBC reported on Friday.

Yaccarino has been in talks with Twitter to take on the role, per the Wall Street Journal.

Regardless of who it is, the incoming CEO will be left with a big mess to sort out after Musk’s chaotic run at the company. 

Five big challenges

After seeing through his $44 billion takeover of Twitter, Musk has had a decidedly bumpy reign that has left his successor with four fundamental challenges to overcome. 

The first is Twitter’s finances. Musk’s takeover of Twitter was fueled in part by a $13 billion debt package that has lumped the company with a real financial burden. Musk repeatedly said Twitter was weeks away from bankruptcy after taking charge, making revenue a top priority.

For any new CEO, that means finding a way of turning Twitter into a revenue-generating machine. The company’s 2021 earnings – its last full-year results before being delisted – showed it was hugely loss-making with a net loss of $221.4 million.

Musk has introduced new measures to improve this dicey situation, by getting users to pay for services like verification. Musk is handing out blue checks for free given the poor takeup for the subscription service, so his successor will need backup plans. It is unclear how much money Musk has made from this to date.

The second challenge facing the new CEO is the battle to hold onto advertisers – a battle that will face its defining moment as Twitter enters its Tucker Carlson era.

The former Fox News host, who was dismissed last month, announced this week that he would be launching a new show on Twitter. Given his notoriety for controversy, that could be a fatal double-edged sword for Twitter’s new chief.

On the one hand, the roughly 3 million viewers who would tune into Carlson’s Fox News show each night are likely to follow him on Twitter. That’s a win for the company.

On the other hand, the potential for Carlson’s broadsides to slip into the conspiratorial and vitriolic will greatly test the patience of advertisers. Half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers paused ads a month after Musk’s takeover; the same could happen again. 

The third challenge is competition. Musk’s penchant for rubbing people the wrong way has led several opportunists to recognize the frustration users and advertisers have had in recent months by introducing them to rival platforms. 

Some, like Mastodon, a decentralized social-media service, have struggled to attract significant numbers given its clunkiness and long waitlist to join. Others, however, are proving more effective. 

Bluesky, which has a waitlist of around 2 million people, is backed by Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey and has already managed to develop an active user base, which includes the likes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Robert Garcia.

Newsletter platform Substack, meanwhile, has launched a Twitter-style feature called Notes, while earning a following from former Musk confidants such as journalist Matt Taibbi. 

For Twitter’s new CEO, the threat these platforms pose is very real. One egregious slip of the tongue from Carlson or any potential guests on his new Twitter show could see users – and lucrative ad execs – flocking towards any number of other tweeting alternatives. 

The fourth challenge, of course, is Musk himself. The billionaire’s shift towards a “hardcore” culture at the company did not sit well with many employees. Despite relinquishing CEO duties, he plans on retaining control as executive chair and chief technology officer. 

The outsized influence of Musk will put pressure on the final challenge: deciding what Twitter actually is. Musk’s chaotic approach to moderation and verification has turned news organizations cold – despite those organizations being at the heart of Twitter. 

NPR, which had its Twitter account labeled as “state-affiliated media,” has not tweeted since April 12. If news organizations are continuously maligned, Twitter’s new CEO will need to solve an identity crisis.

Whoever it is that replaces Musk, they can only hope he doesn’t add even more to their plate. Anything can happen in six weeks.