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Wealthy Americans Are Prioritizing Protecting Assets And Limiting Personal Taxes

Protecting assets and minimizing tax liabilities are the top priorities of wealthy Wall Street Journal and Barron’s Group readers, according to a recent personal finance study conducted by WSJ Intelligence.

Around 57% of the more than 3,600 respondents—who had an average net worth of just over US$3 million—said growing and protecting their wealth is their No. 1 priority going into 2024, the data showed. That stands to reason, as 55% of readers were most concerned about inflation and the rising cost of living, while 40% reported that market volatility was their biggest issue.

About 81% of participants were male, with 3,280 of them being over age 55—aka, Baby Boomers. The combined total of Millennial and Gen X respondents was 333. Across wealth bands, the largest number of participants—1,656—were high-net-worth individuals with assets between US$1 million and US$9.9 million, followed by 718 “emerging affluent” respondents (with a net worth of less than US$1 million) and 253 ultra-high-net-worth individuals, with assets of US$10 million or more.

“This study was really to understand the behavior of our financially savvy readers and explore how they improve their financial acumen and make informed investment decisions,” says Donna Zeolla, the associate director of Finance Intelligence for the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s Group.

Certain concerns are unique to those in the highest income bracket, the survey found. For example, members of that group are 22% more likely to be concerned about identity theft and financial fraud than emerging affluents, the data showed. Zeolla said that was a surprise, given how rampant it can be.

The wealthiest are also 28% more likely to be worried about cybersecurity risks in digital banking and three times more likely to be concerned with estate planning and inheritance, according to the report. They are looking to educate themselves on tax planning, private banking, and estate planning—and in turn seeking out content that helps them do that.

Survey participants across wealth bands use a variety of wealth management services, including brokerage, tax and estate-planning services. When selecting an investing company, key considerations are the fee and commissions charged (49%), expertise (44%), customer service (38%), and the company’s reputation (36%), the figures showed.

“Every survey we’ve done here, at least for the 18 years I’ve been here, it’s the same things that they’re looking for in the institutions,” Zeolla says. “They look at fees, right? I don’t care if you’re the wealthiest person, you’re looking at the fees…[and] they look at the trust and the reputation of the companies. That’s always on their minds.”

And while many are loyal to their financial institutions, the richest investors are more open to switching. Only 41% of ultra-high-net-worth individuals wouldn’t consider moving their money to a new company, versus 53% of high-net-worth individuals and 49% of the emerging affluent.

“Wealthier individuals use a variety of different services—they don’t just have one institution that they’re working with, they’re working with many,” Zeolla says. “But what we did find was that the wealthier people were, the more that they’re open for change. It could be because they’re not loyal to one institution.”

Other differences included their preferred credit cards—the wealthiest were concerned about foreign-transaction fees while low interest rates were more important to younger respondents—and the richest also craved the personal touch. About 47% of ultra-high-net-worth individuals don’t use an automatic investing service because it doesn’t cater to their needs vs. 27% of the emerging affluent.

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More home buyers take up government help to purchase

More home buyers are using government home loan guarantees to help them purchase a property, however, only two-thirds of the 50,000 guarantees on offer in FY23 were taken up.

More than 32,500 guarantees were issued in FY23, according to Housing Australia’s annual report on the Home Guarantee Scheme. The scheme comprises three segments – the First Home Guarantee (FHBG), the Family Home Guarantee (FHG) and the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee (RFHBG).

The schemes allows first home buyers to purchase with a mere 5% deposit, and single parents need just 2%. This is vastly lower than the standard 20% deposit required by most lending institutions. In FY23, just under 70% of FHBG guarantees were taken up, along with just 60% of RFHGB guarantees and only 36% of FHG guarantees. The remaining guarantees expired.

Those using the scheme represented one in three of all first home buyers across Australia in FY23, up from one in seven in FY22. According to the report: “The dramatic change is likely due to a combination of the increased number of available Scheme places in 2022–23, the widened eligibility within the Scheme and first home buyers facing a more challenging purchasing environment.”

Housing Australia’s head of research, data and analytics, Hugh Hartigan said substantial increases in interest rates since May 2022 had led to more buyers relying on government help to buy a home. “The broader macroeconomic environment with rapidly rising interest rates has substantially decreased mortgage serviceability with flow-on effects for affordability and this has led to first home buyers relying more heavily (proportionally) on the scheme than in previous years,” he said.

Among the trends are an increasing number of younger Australians and essential workers seeking help. More than half of all places under the FHBG and RFHBG were taken up by first-time buyers aged under 30. That’s up from about a third in FY20, when the scheme was first introduced. About 14% of FHBG guarantees issued in FY23 went to buyers aged 18 to 24 years, up from 3% in FY20. Essential workers such as teachers, nurses and social workers took up 7,721 guarantees in FY23, up from 5,650 in FY22.

At a state and territory level, demand for guarantees remained strongest in Queensland and Western Australia in FY23. Buyers in Greater Perth, Melbourne, Greater Brisbane and regional Queensland received the largest number of guarantees in FY23.

The most popular postcodes for scheme buyers were 4740 (Mackay Harbour, QLD area), 6112 (Armadale, WA area), 4207 (Beenleigh, QLD area), 4350 (East Toowoomba, QLD area), 3064 (Craigieburn, VIC area), 4305 (Ipswich, QLD area), 6171 (Baldivis, WA area), 6164 (Hammond Park, WA area), 3029 (Truganina, VIC area) and 4680 (Gladstone, QLD area).

The scheme has been expanded for FY24 to include eligible permanent residents, non-first home buyers who have not owned a property in the past 10 years, and any two applicants such as friends, siblings, and married or de facto couples. The FHG has also been expanded to include eligible single legal guardians.

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Netflix Stock Surges on Subscriber Beat. More Price Hikes Are Here

Netflix reported solid earnings and subscriber numbers for the September quarter, sending the stock sharply higher in after-hours trading.

For the third quarter, the company reported earnings of $3.73 a share, compared with the consensus estimate of $3.49 among Wall Street analysts tracked by FactSet. Revenue came in at $8.54 billion, in line with analysts’ expectations of $8.54 billion. Paid subscription net additions were 8.8 million versus the 6.1 million estimate.

Netflix also forecast revenue of $8.7 billion for the current quarter, compared with the consensus view of $8.78 billion.

“We’re optimistic about our prospects and the future of entertainment,” management said in a letter to investors.

Regarding the current work stoppage with SAG-AFTRA, Netflix said: “We’re committed to resolving the remaining issues as quickly as possible so everyone can return to work making movies and TV shows that audiences will love.”

Netflix shares were up 12% in late trading to $389.

The company’s profitability is also improving. Netflix expects an operating profit margin of 20% for 2023, which is at the high end of its prior guidance range of 18% to 20%. Management now predicts better operating margins next year, telling investors to expect a range of 22% to 23%.

There were changes in pricing. Effective Wednesday, the streaming company said, it is raising the U.S. monthly prics of its Premium plan to $22.99 from $19.99, while its Basic plan will go to $11.99 from $9.99. In July, Netflix removed the option for new customers to subscribe to the Basic plan. The company said the prices for its ad-supported and Standard plans will remain the same.

Netflix called out the success of “One Piece,” which was a live-action adaptation of a best-selling manga series. The show generated much conversation on social media and garnered 62 million views.

As of Wednesday’s close, Netflix shares had fallen 27% over the last three months on concerns about its profitability and growth prospects. The company’s latest numbers have put some of those worries to rest.

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Qantas Scraps Attempted Takeover of Australian Charter Operator

SYDNEY—Qantas Airways scrapped its attempt to acquire local charter operator Alliance Aviation Services following opposition from Australia’s competition regulator.

Qantas on Thursday said it agreed to terminate the carriers’ May 2022 agreement under which it would acquire its smaller rival in an all-stock deal that valued Alliance at about 763.5 million at the time.

In April 2023, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said that both Qantas and Alliance are key suppliers to resources companies who need to transport so-called fly-in, fly-out workers in Western Australia and Queensland states. The tie-up would significantly reduce competition, the ACCC said.

“Both companies acknowledge that there is no reasonable path forward for the deal at present,” Qantas said on Thursday.

Qantas said that it will continue to serve the resources sector through existing charter operations. It said it has about 27% of Australia’s total charter market.

Australia’s national carrier added that it will exercise options for four additional aircraft under its existing long-term charter agreement with Alliance, bringing the total of E190 craft operated by Alliance for Qantas to 26 from April 2024. Qantas has four more options under the agreement.

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How Generative AI Will Change the Way You Use the Web, From Search to Shopping

People seeking information online will increasingly go first to TikTok, ChatGPT and other applications powered by generative artificial intelligence, instead of using traditional search engines, said Michael Wolf, co-founder and chief executive of consulting firm Activate.

Today, about 13 million U.S. adults begin their web searches by using generative AI, Activate data show. Wolf predicts that will grow to more than 90 million by 2027 because generative AI is capable of providing results with far greater precision and customisation.

“Generative AI fundamentally changes the model for search because the results are no longer links,” said Wolf, who gave a presentation of Activate’s findings at The Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live conference on Tuesday. “It serves up your information totally packaged and ready to use.”

Applications rife with customer data will benefit the most from this shift, Wolf said, as they will be better equipped to serve their users with personalised information. He expects TikTok to lead in this area because Activate estimates that its users already spend an average of more than 54 minutes a day on it, compared with 49 minutes daily on YouTube, 33 on Instagram and 31 on Facebook.

Amazon and other major e-commerce platforms have also embraced generative AI to better recommend products for users based on their past behaviour, along with many music- and video-streaming apps, Wolf said.

For example, Spotify earlier this year introduced AI DJ, a feature that offers a curated lineup of music alongside commentary around the tracks and artists that the app thinks users will like. “Choices are being made for you,” Wolf said.

Google and other search engines are also taking advantage of generative AI, yet Wolf said they might not remain the first stop or default option for most people. People are devoting more of their time to social media, entertainment platforms, online videogames and other utility apps that are also embracing the technology.

According to Wolf, domination within the $100 billion search industry is “up for grabs” and large, established companies aren’t necessarily going to outmuscle startups. The rise of open-source AI models is paving a pathway for smaller entrants to potentially make a big impact, he said.

Adoption of generative AI is being driven by a significant increase in the amount of time people spend online—behavior boosted by the pandemic, Activate data show. With people spending more time online, they are becoming adept at using multiple applications at once, enabling them to accomplish more in a single day than would otherwise be possible. Today, the average U.S. adult spends 13 hours daily multitasking among video, audio, games, social media and various technology and media activities.

“AI is making everybody into a metaverse creator,” Wolf said, referring to extensive online worlds where people interact via digital avatars.

Generative AI is poised to disrupt the internet in other ways besides search, such as content creation, Wolf said. By typing simple text prompts into applications featuring the technology, anyone—not just tech-savvy folks who know how to write code—will be able to make videogames, artwork, music and even entire virtual worlds on their own.

More predictions from Wolf’s presentation:

  • Nearly all U.S. households, more than 120 million, will be able to access the internet through their television sets by 2027. Whether people own a smart TV or have a device like Roku, the TV screen will play a bigger role than ever, driving subscriptions for streaming services and capturing valuable viewing data.
  • By 2027, the average video-streaming subscriber will have 5.8 subscriptions, up from 4.9 today. With many such applications now offering the option to see ads in exchange for lower monthly fees, Activate predicts ad revenues across the major video streaming services will grow 25% annually through 2027.
  • Spatial computing—the ability to interact with virtual imagery displayed without obstructing a user’s view of the real world—won’t be limited to pricey virtual- and augmented-reality headsets. The technology will be prevalent on almost any internet-connected device with a screen, from car navigation systems and kitchen appliances to digital door locks and mall kiosks.
  • Online sports betting will continue to grow and evolve. The activity became legal five years ago, and it is now available in 35 states. Activate forecasts that U.S. adults will collectively wager $186 billion annually by 2027, up from about $123 billion today. Another change: Sportsbooks today rely on extensive sign-up and referral bonuses to attract new customers, but going forward retention will be driven by improved betting options and user experiences.
  • While the average U.S. adult will spend 13 hours a day multitasking by 2027, the majority of the time will entail watching video, followed by listening to music, podcasts and other audio, and playing videogames. How consumers will spend this time with technology and media will differ across generations. For example, YouTube and other social-media platforms will become the top destinations for younger adults looking to discover new music, while those over the age of 35 will still rely on the radio.
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Singing the praises of Australia’s best known house

Y ou could argue we didn’t deserve the Sydney Opera House. In fact, some would say we still don’t.

Regularly referenced in Australian popular culture on everything from tea towels to Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, it’s easy to gloss over that the design for this iconic building on a narrow peninsula in Sydney Harbour came from a vision literally half a world away.

For architecture aficionados, it’s a work of unparalleled excellence. For Australians, it’s as synonymous with our identity as Uluru, kangaroos and Bondi Beach.  

This year marks the 50th anniversary since the World Heritage-listed building was opened on October 20 1973, amid budget blowouts, design changes and disputes among politicians, engineers and designers that eventually lead Danish architect, and visionary Jørn Utzon to resign, vowing never to return.

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Now considered Utzon’s greatest work, the site went through a 10-year building program at a cost of almost $300 million, including the renewal of the Concert Hall by ARM Architects, which reopened last year. It is designed to ensure it maintains its position as an architectural masterpiece, as well as being a fitting venue for world-class performing arts experiences.

But it almost wasn’t so.

Conceived on the other side of the world

When the NSW Government under Labor Premier Joseph Cahill announced a design competition in 1956 for a new opera house on Bennelong Point, there were more than 200 entries from local and international architects. Among them was a simple but radical design with curved ‘shells’ by an unknown Danish architect that had already been rejected by the judging panel as impossible to build.

Current heritage architect at the Sydney Opera House, Alan Croker, says it was the renown American-Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, who was on the judging panel, who suggested the design be reconsidered.

“Saarinen was late to the meeting and he pulled it out of the reject box,” says Croker. “He recognised that it was possible (to build) because of some of the work he was doing at JFK Airport in New York. But at that stage it was not physically possible to build a shell structure of that height.”

circa 1965: Danish architect Jorn Utzon in front of the Sydney Opera House during its construction. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

While Utzon had grown up literally half a world away in Denmark, his home town in Aalborg is known for its waterfront which cuts through the Jutland region. The son of a seaman, Utzon understood the notion of peninsulas as pieces of land that could be viewed and accessed from all sides. In an age where commercial air travel was still a novelty, he also recognised that any building in a prominent position like this would be regularly viewed from above.

“He understood the site from similar places in Denmark and Europe and from his knowledge of navigation charts, so he understood plans from below and above the water,” says Croker. “He looked to Kronborg Castle (in Helsingør) which is on a headland and he saw it as being a similar idea to this building which would be seen from all sides while still having a relationship to the land.”

As it turns out, the unknown architect from Denmark understood the potential of the Sydney Harbour site better than most, says heritage manager at the Sydney Opera House, Laura Matarese.

“There were commonalities in how he could read the design brief and the site, which is what made it so special,” she says. “Because of the way he grew up and his understanding of water and how it moves, he knew that what the site needed was inspiration from nature.”

A spiritual experience

Prior to submitting his design to the NSW Government, Utzon had travelled extensively, including trekking through New Mexico and Central America where he had been inspired by the temples of the Mayan and Aztec cultures.

Director of Exhibitions at the Utzon Center in Denmark, Line Nørskov Eriksen, who wrote her PhD on Utzon’s work, says the influence of those structures is evident in the design of the Sydney Opera House.

“He travelled to Aztec and Mayan archaeological sites and the Yucatan peninsula where these civilisations had created platforms in the jungle,” she says. “Utzon described moving up these platforms step by step and how, when you stand upon the platform, your world is transformed. You have this sense of being closer to heaven. 

“It has this authentic quality of a temple. Even though the platform was built thousands of years ago, you have that same feeling.”

Coupled with the romance of the curved shells, the soaring ceilings and its connection to landscape, the opera house steps, where countless tourists have posed for photos and many more music lovers have enjoyed their favourite bands, were a deliberate decision to elevate the experience of seeing live performance from the everyday lives of visitors.

“The opera house is almost like a temple structure,” says Croker. “It has the ability to elevate the experience from a physical one to an emotional level, which was something that Utzon was trying to do — to create a disconnect with the ordinary world.”

The beauty of a
simple idea

There’s no question that building the opera house was extremely challenging. By the time it opened, the initial budget had blown out from $7 million to $102 million and timelines had stretched from a four-year completion target to the eventual 14 years it took to finish the building.

All this for a building Nørskov Eriksen describes as “a window into the beauty of a simple idea.”

John Weiley’s 1968 documentary Autopsy on a Dream, which examines the cultural, political and architectural forces at play during construction, suggests work began on the site before the question of building the revolutionary shells was resolved for political expediency. That is, that the project may have been cancelled with a change of government if work wasn’t already underway.

The knock-on effect, where, as narrator Bob Ellis puts it, ‘mistakes were made in concrete and steel rather than pencil and paper’ contributed to soaring costs. Public opinion varied from those who thought it was a waste of public money (it was being funded by a government lottery) and those who felt it was Sydney’s moment to launch itself on the world stage.

In this environment, Utzon and the engineering team were separately trying to solve the puzzle of creating structurally sound shells.

Costs for the opera house soared during construction. Image: Sydney Opera House

“They had to find a way to do a raised structure that would support the shell covering,” says Croker. “There was a long period of examining a lot of the geometrics to try to get a model that would work in an ordered manner. It was only when Utzon came up with the idea where he thought maybe they could be the same curvature. 

“He tested it with a beach ball in the bath and then he went to his father’s workshop and worked it out. There was a lot of testing and then there was a bit of a Eureka moment from Utzon that solved it and that made prefabrication much easier.”

While there were claims that Utzon was difficult and uncompromising, Nørskov Eriksen says he was integral in drawing others into his vision for the building.

“When Utzon spoke about the idea sitting behind this drawing, he got the whole office involved in solving the construction of the building because it was so objectively beautiful,” she says. 

Disputes over design changes and budgetary concerns eventually lead to Utzon leaving the project, and Australia, after nine years. 

Protests followed and local architect Peter Hall was charged with completing the opera house, with many in the architectural fraternity considering the design compromised. Croker says Peter Hall’s contribution was significant.

“With my involvement, I came to understand the role that Peter Hall had in it,” he says. “He tried his utmost to complete Utzon’s vision — and he did it so beautifully in so many ways.”

Birthday celebrations

With upgrades to the Concert Hall and Joan Sutherland Theatre to improve acoustics, lighting and rehearsal options now complete, the stage is set for the Sydney Opera House to continue its position as Australia’s premier performing arts space for the next half century.

For Croker, who watched the building being constructed as a young architecture student and someone with a lifelong love of the performing arts, it’s more than just a focal point in the harbour.

“I have a passion for performing arts, and these things have a capacity to elevate you and think about higher ideas and bring complex issues to the world. The building did that for me.”

“It’s a wonderful building and it is a huge gift that has been given to us by Utzon and Peter Hall and (engineer Ove) Arup and we should look after it and enjoy it.”

The commitment to upgrades and maintenance have set the building up well to perform its many and varied roles for the next 50 years, says Matarese.

“It’s an incredibly hardworking building,” she says. “It’s a world heritage site but it’s also a living, breathing, functional art centre. 

“It’s not just a monument or a museum — there’s a lot happening here 24/7.”

Heritage architect Alan Croker has been a fan of the opera house since he saw it being constructed as a student. Credit: Design 5 Architects/Sheridan Burke

And while Australians value the building highly, Nørskov Eriksen says its place in world architecture is also assured.

“It’s the greatest piece of architecture in the world, in my opinion,” she says.

The Utzon Center will be acknowledging the 50th anniversary next year with a permanent exhibition on the Sydney Opera House, which is still Utzon’s best known work internationally.

“We will have a dedicated gallery space for Utzon’s work on it with original models and an exhibition that explains the basic foundation of his approach to architecture,” she says. “The Sydney Opera House is the most important project. We find many of our visitors know the opera house but they don’t know the architecture behind it. It’s a gateway into the rest of Utzon’s work.”

Nørskov Eriksen says in some ways, it’s amazing it was ever built. 

“When I think about what happened in Sydney, the trust the committee put in Utzon, it is one thing to say yes, but the actual public who built it and how people let themselves be persuaded by a beautiful idea — I wish there was more of that.”

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Tech Earnings Season Starts Soon. Warnings Are Already Piling Up

With tech earnings season about to start, investors should be aware that a flurry of the industry’s less-followed players have been warning about emerging weakness across the enterprise and telecommunications-networking landscape.

Evercore ISI hardware analyst Amit Daryanani, speaking Tuesday on Barron’s Live, noted that heading into earnings he has concerns about weakness in IT enterprise spending, continued soft demand from communications carriers, and continued caution by consumers. The primary bright spot he sees heading into earnings: spending on cloud and AI infrastructure.

The list of companies providing cautious commentary on the outlook is growing by the day.

NetScout Systems stock (ticker: NTCT) is down 17% on Tuesday after the cybersecurity software company slashed its revenue forecast for its March 2024 fiscal year to a range of $840 million to $860 million, down from a previous forecast of $915 million to $945 million. NetScout also trimmed its adjusted profit per share forecast for the year to $2 to $2.20, down from $2.20 to $2.32. The company said it is seeing “slower order conversion,” due to “industry and economic headwinds facing our customers” that began in September.

Ericsson American depositary receipts (ERIC) are 3.3% lower after the networking infrastructure company on Tuesday provided disappointing financial guidance. “We expect the underlying uncertainty impacting our Mobile Networks business to persist into 2024,” the company said.

Adtran (ADTN), which provides networking hardware, on Monday warned that it now sees third-quarter revenue of $272.3 million, below its previous guidance range of $275 million to $305 million. Adtran said that its “customers remain focused on reducing inventory levels and managing capital expenses.”

Late last week, Belden (BDC), another network infrastructure provider, said it now sees third-quarter revenue of $625 million, down from a previous forecast of $675 million to $690 million. “Demand began to weaken in the third quarter, adding to ongoing pressure from channel destocking,” Belden said in its announcement. “We believe softer demand will continue as we move into the fourth quarter, impacting both revenue and profitability.”

A10 Networks (ATEN), which also provides networking infrastructure, likewise provided September quarter preliminary results that failed to match previous estimates. “In our third quarter we experienced delays related to North American service provider customers pushing out capital expenditures,” the company said earlier this month. “Deals we expected to close at the end of the quarter were delayed into future periods.”

Cambium Networks (CMBM), which provides wireless-network infrastructure, said earlier this month that it now sees third quarter revenue of $40 million to $45 million, below previous guidance of $62 million to $70 million. The company cited a number of reasons for the big miss, including a delay in government orders due to U.S. government budgetary timing issues, and a decrease in orders from distributors in the company’s enterprise business, among other things.

Tech earnings season kicks off Wednesday with results from Netflix (NFLX), to be followed by a deluge of financial reports next week from Alphabet (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), International Business Machines (IBM), Meta Platforms (META), ServiceNow (NOW), Amazon.com (AMZN), Intel (INTC), and Juniper Networks (JNPR), among others.

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Rolls-Royce to Cut 2,000-2,500 Jobs Globally in Strategic Overhaul

Rolls-Royce Holdings is set to cut 2,000-2,500 jobs worldwide as part of a transformation program and strategy review.

The U.K.-based aircraft engine manufacturer, which outlined the review plan in January, said Tuesday that the new structure will create a more agile business better able to serve customers, deliver cost efficiencies, and help it improve its capabilities in areas such as procurement and supply-chain management.

“This is another step on our multiyear transformation journey to build a high performing, competitive, resilient and growing Rolls-Royce,” Chief Executive Tufan Erginbilgic said.

The engineering technology and safety teams will be merged into a single team, responsible for product safety, engineering standards, process, methods and tools. The combined team will be led by Simon Burr, currently director of product development and technology for civil aerospace, who will join the executive team with immediate effect. Enabling functions, like finance, general counsel and people teams will also be brought together.

Chief Technology Officer Grazia Vittadini will leave the company in April.

Other proposals include creating a new enterprise-wide procurement and supplier management organisation, supporting group spend consolidation, leveraging scale and developing consistent standards. As well as savings, a greater focus on these areas will lead to customer service improvements, reducing supply-chain delays.

Rolls-Royce currently employs 42,000 people worldwide.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in May, Erginbilgic said that his first goal was to pay down debt and generate cash to restore Rolls-Royce’s investment-grade rating—lost at the start of the pandemic. He said then he also wants to be able to reinstall payments to shareholders, that Rolls-Royce suspended in 2020.

“In every division of the group we are underperforming versus the competition,” Erginbilgic told the Journal then. “That is to me a turnaround case.”

Erginbilgic, a former oil-industry executive, took over as chief executive of Rolls-Royce Holdings in January.

On Aug. 3 Rolls-Royce reported a pretax profit for the six months ended June 30 of 1.42 billion pounds ($1.73 billion), compared with a loss of GBP1.75 billion a year earlier.

Underlying operating profit—a key metric for the company that strips out exceptional and other one-off items—was GBP673 million, up from GBP125 million.

Rolls-Royce’s latest guidance for 2023 is for an underlying operating profit of between GBP1.2 billion and GBP1.4 billion. It expects 400 to 500 total engine deliveries for the year.

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Where will all our new migrants live?

Australia is in the midst of a migration surge with 715,000 net arrivals expected over the next two years alone, according to government forecasts.

While it is clear that Australia’s labour market is tight and many industries are in desperate need of more skilled workers, the challenge is how are we going to house all these new people?

Migrants’ typical path in terms of housing is to rent first, either close to their employment or in areas where there is an established community of fellow countrymen or family already living there. Property data house CoreLogic estimates it takes about five years for most migrants to buy a home. However, Australia is in the midst of a rental housing crisis, and this may be leading to more migrants buying a home immediately, thereby adding to demand and contributing to the somewhat surprising rate of home price rises this year, despite significantly higher interest rates.

“A significant lift in net overseas migration has run headlong into a lack of housing supply,” says CoreLogic research director Tim Lawless. Given the extraordinarily low rental vacancy rates across Australia today, Mr Lawless said “it’s reasonable to assume more people are fast tracking a purchasing decision simply because they can’t find rental accommodation.”

So, where will all our new migrants go?

New data from property advertising portal realestate.com.au (REA) provides some insight into where migrants are looking for their first home. By analysing page views among overseas site visitors over the past six-month period, REA can reveal which suburbs are capturing the most interest.

It’s worth noting that ‘overseas buyers’ is a broad category representing many different types of property purchasers, and the data does not distinguish between them. Some may be impending new arrivals such as families or international students. Some may be the parents of international students seeking to purchase a home for their child while studying here, and some may be expats researching the market ahead of their return home. The rest may be foreign investors seeking to invest capital. There has been a resurgence in foreign investment in 2023, particularly from China where the local property market is cooling as the economy enters a deflationary period.

REA senior data analyst Karen Dellow says interest in Australian property from overseas has never been higher. According to the data, Melbourne is the most searched location in Australia among overseas visitors to the REA site, followed by the Gold Coast, Brisbane CBD, and Sydney CBD. Also within the top 20 locations are Perth CBD and its inner suburbs, the Queensland Sunshine Coast, Adelaide CBD, and the premium Melbourne suburbs of Brighton, South Yarra, and Camberwell.

Historically, the top two locations for new arrivals have long been Melbourne and Sydney, but the data implies that Queensland is gaining more attention. Half the locations in the top 20 suburbs are in Melbourne and 25% are in Queensland.

The data also shows the suburbs gaining increasing interest from overseas buyers. Ms Dellow said searches for properties in Brunswick East, in inner Melbourne, have increased by 60%, closely followed by Carlton North. “Both suburbs have seen significant development in the past few years and are close to the University of Melbourne and the CBD,” Ms Dellow said. “Searches for Ashgrove in inner Brisbane have increased by 45%, and the Sunshine Coast’s Mooloolaba; and Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast, have also become more popular.”

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Step Aside, Banks. Tesla and Netflix Earnings Are the Real Tests

Forget banks—third-quarter earnings season doesn’t start until Wednesday, when Netflix and Tesla report.

Since Alcoa’s (ticker: AA) abdication, the kickoff of earnings season has been assigned to the U.S.’s big banks, including JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Citigroup (C), which reported earnings on Friday. This despite the fact that some large, prominent companies, including PepsiCo (PEP) and Delta Air Lines (DAL), disclosed their results earlier in the week.

Don’t expect the overall market to care too much about how the banks do. The S&P 500 financials sector, which includes banks and insurers but also Visa (V) and Mastercard (MA), totals 12.7% of the index’s market value. Its earnings contribution is expected to be larger, at 17.4% of third-quarter earnings, according to data from Refinitiv. But these days, the banks are less a reflection of the U.S. economy than they are of monetary and regulatory policy, which take up a good portion of their earnings calls.

No, earnings season doesn’t really get started until Wednesday, when the first of the large technology-oriented stocks that have driven the S&P 500 this year are set to report. That would be Tesla (TSLA) and Netflix (NFLX), followed by Alphabet (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), Meta Platforms (META), Amazon.com (AMZN) next week, and then Apple (AAPL) on Nov. 2. Nvidia’s (NVDA) fiscal third quarter doesn’t end until Oct. 31, and it will report in late November.

The Magnificent Eight punch well above their fundamental weight, thanks to premium valuation multiples. The group makes up roughly 30% of the S&P 500’s market capitalisation but is expected to contribute just 10% of the index’s third-quarter sales and 16% of earnings, according to Refinitiv. Hits and misses from their results will prompt outsize moves in the index.

Take Meta, which Wall Street analysts expect to report $8.0 billion in earnings for the third quarter, up 120% from the same period last year. That’s nearly a full percentage-point contribution to the S&P 500’s overall expected earnings growth in the quarter.

Nvidia is responsible for another 1.5 percentage point of expected growth, Amazon for 0.6 point, and Alphabet and Microsoft for 0.5 point each. With growth rates like those, how well the biggest companies on the market do could meaningfully swing overall S&P 500’s earnings growth one way or another.

There’s a slim margin for error: Analysts are predicting 1.3% year-over-year earnings growth from the S&P 500 in the third quarter, per Refinitiv. The biggest expected individual detractors from the index’s year-over-year earnings growth are Exxon Mobil (XOM)—a 1.9-percentage-point drag—and Pfizer (PFE), a 1.5-point drag.

That’s before considering the potential impact to investor sentiment from Big Tech’s results. In a year dominated by macro themes, the enthusiasm around artificial intelligence has been one of the greatest bullish drivers of the stock market. Nvidia’s results are showing the benefit already, while other companies are more likely to be merely talking up the technology’s transformative potential.

Hype can only go so far—eventually even Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet will need to show that their AI investments are yielding a positive return. The third quarter of 2023 is still early innings in the AI revolution, but signs of progress will be cheered by investors, and may be necessary to justify many of the Magnificent Eight’s huge rallies this year.

Third-quarter earnings season may have officially kicked off, but the real action has yet to begin.

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Living Paycheck to Paycheck Is Common, Even Among Those Who Make More Than $100,000

Many Americans are living in financial distress, at least some of the time.

That’s the message of a recent Harris Poll, and it’s bad news for economic growth.

About 65% of working Americans say they frequently live paycheck to paycheck, according to a recent survey of 2,105 U.S. adults conducted by The Harris Poll, asking questions supplied by Barron’s. About 30% of households report that they run out of money at the end of every month, while 35% say they don’t have money left at the end of most months.

While the number of people living on the edge financially has an immediate effect on household well-being, there are also longer term economic costs, including higher debt levels and uneven retirement readiness. Those trends could also dampen overall economic growth.

Unsurprisingly, people earning less tend to struggle more, but even those considered well off are vulnerable to paycheck shocks. About 78% of Americans earning less than $50,000 a year report they live paycheck to paycheck, according to the survey. Yet 51% of Americans who make more than $100,000 a year say they still run out of money.

Living paycheck to paycheck is a fairly “ubiquitous” circumstance, says Fiona Greig, Vanguard’s global head of investor research and policy. That’s because U.S. adults generally tend to need a bigger cash buffer than they anticipate. Additionally, she says, many consumers are facing higher living expenses as inflation erodes their purchasing power.

The latest Harris survey data show a higher percentage of Americans living paycheck to paycheck than the roughly 60% reported in August in the Reality Check: Paycheck-To-Paycheck research series. The difference likely is due to differences in the survey population, and rising energy costs that hit consumers’ budgets in recent weeks. At the end of September, gasoline averaged $3.83 a gallon nationally, two cents more than in August, and seven cents more than a year earlier, according to AAA.

Data from the Reality Check series have oscillated since the Covid pandemic started. About 66% of those surveyed in March 2020 said they were spending down their paychecks. Some 52% of Americans were in such straits in April 2021, shortly after the most generous round of federal stimulus checks went out. The latest share, at 60%, is little-changed from the prior year.

Although generous government stimulus programs boosted consumers’ savings during the Covid pandemic, those outlays have waned. The Federal Bank of San Francisco estimated that Americans accumulated $2.1 trillion in total excess savings during the pandemic. Only about $190 billion remained on consumer balance sheets as of June, the bank estimated.Researchers anticipate the data will show that excess savings were gone completely as of the end of September.

Overall inflation also has taken a toll, leaving Americans with less purchasing power. Although headline inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, has fallen from a high of 9% recorded in June 2022, prices climbed at a 3.7% annual pace in September, well above the Federal Reserve’s desired 2% target.

Even as Americans draw down their savings, they aren’t refilling their coffers. The U.S. personal savings rate—the percentage of disposable personal income to total income—was 3.9% in August, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. While that is 0.7 percentage points higher than a year ago during a higher-inflation period, the current rate is well below prepandemic averages.

Diminished savings suggest Americans are relying on more credit now than during the pandemic, and data bear that out. Total U.S. credit-card debt hit a record of $1.03 trillion during the second quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

A slower rate of savings and a higher level of borrowing have longer term consequences for many Americans. Vanguard’s research indicates that even with the influx of cash during the pandemic, the vast majority of Americans aren’t on track to meet their spending needs in retirement, and that’s after including Social Security income and private savings. The problem is particularly acute for lower-income families.

Social Security benefits replace about 62% of the retirement income that families earning roughly $22,000 a year need once they no longer are working, Vanguard reported. Yet even higher-income Americans rely on Social Security. Families earning about $173,000 a year draw about 18% of their retirement income from Social Security, according to Vanguard.

Social Security is inflation-protected, but cost-of-living adjustments affect the amount of benefits paid, and as a result, impact the program’s projected long-term solvency. Social Security benefits are set to rise 3.2% for 2024, increasing the average monthly payment of $1,790 by $57.

The high percentage of financially vulnerable Americans, whether working or retired, poses broader problems. Consumer spending accounts for about 70% of the U.S. economy. If Americans pull back on their household spending because they need to pay interest on their credit cards or loans, or because they don’t have enough saved to live in retirement, that could impact the nation’s growth.

So far, most Americans have kept up with their debt payments while continuing to spend. Overall delinquencies were largely in check as of the second quarter.

The robust labour market has helped: The U.S. economy added 336,000 jobs in September, well above expectations. Even so, the imbalance between labour demand and supply continues to narrow, Fed Vice Chair Philip Jefferson said in a speech last Monday.

“We’re at kind of a turning point in our economy,” Greig says, noting that this could be an inflection point for consumers.

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Why Americans Are Obsessed With These Ugly Sandals

One of the iconic shots of the year’s biggest movie was Margot Robbie’s Barbie character in Birkenstocks.

She was only wearing them because of Margot Fraser.

This woman responsible for bringing the supremely comfy, seductively ugly German footwear to the U.S. was one of the most improbable business figures of her time.

She was an accidental entrepreneur who started distributing Birkenstocks from her California home in the 1960s, when nobody knew what they were or how orthopaedic sandals cured foot pain. The only places that would carry them were health-food stores, where each pair might as well have come with a jar of granola. She was a dressmaker with no clue about shoes, much less crunchy ones, but she grew the company from zero to hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. She would even come to be known as Mrs. Birkenstock.

The sandals that she introduced to Americans have become more popular and the business much bigger than Fraser could have predicted. This week, when Birkenstock went public, the company was valued at $8.6 billion.

It’s fitting that Birkenstock’s initial public offering comes on the heels of a summer ruled by the spending power of women because this is a company whose U.S. business has always been built around their needs.

That’s in large part because of Margot Fraser, the most important woman in the company’s history. She paid attention to women—and it paid off. They were her first customers. They were also her best customers. Birkenstock’s financial documents credit “the breakthrough of modern feminism” as a key driver of its business, and the company’s private-equity backers cite the products’ appeal to women as one of the reasons they invested. In fact, Birkenstock says 72% of its customers are female.

It’s a remarkably high number for a company that explicitly markets its products as unisex. Steve Jobs wore them. Sneaker geeks want them. They were designed by Karl Birkenstock, a son of Carl and grandson of Konrad, descendants of the man who started the family’s tradition of shoemaking 249 years ago. More recently, the private-equity firm and family office of Bernard Arnault, the billionaire chief executive of LVMH’s luxury empire, bought a controlling stake and took the company public.

Anyone can now own stock in BIRK because of its connection to one of the world’s richest men, but Birkenstock never would have been in this position without a pioneering woman.

“It is because of Margot and the foundation she built that the brand is enjoying the success that it is today,” the president of the company’s American division said when she died in 2017.

She was the first to admit that she was an unlikely footwear executive and had to learn how to run the business one step at a time.

“I didn’t know a thing about shoes,” she once said. “What I did know was that my feet were always hurting.”

But that was all she needed to know. She figured that millions of women across the country must have feet that were always hurting, too.

Fraser had a keen sense of the American consumer for someone who grew up in war-torn Germany. The principal of her elementary school in the 1930s taught her that “girls were capable of anything and should follow their dreams,” but not everyone in her life agreed. “My mother thought that was all ridiculous feminist stuff,” Fraser wrote in a book offering business advice. Her father wasn’t exactly Betty Friedan, either. When she told him she wanted to travel the world for business and show people that “not all Germans were bad,” he responded: “My dear, you could never do that as a woman.”

She went to dressmaking school and moved to the countryside to make clothing for farmers, who paid her in eggs and butter. It was the teenager’s first taste of entrepreneurship. When she couldn’t see a future in Germany after World War II, she decided to leave home in pursuit of her childhood dream, and she boarded a trans-Atlantic ship with $25 in her pocket.

But it was only when Fraser returned as a tourist nearly 15 years later that she discovered the shoes that would rescue her feet and transform her life.

She was living in the U.S. when she took a spa trip back to Germany in 1966 and came across “sandals that weren’t pretty to look at.” But after years of trying anything to fix her aching feet—even standing on a phone book and gripping it with her toes—she tried on her first Birkenstocks.

She was pain-free within months.

Fraser realised that her feet were always hurting because of her painful footwear. No amount of standing on phone books would have made a difference for women in constrictive heels with pointed toes. What did make the difference for Fraser were these sandals made with leather, cork and a footbed the Birkenstock men invented. They were following in the footsteps of Johannes Birkenstock, which date back to 1774, when the cobbler was mentioned in the church records of a village near Frankfurt. The company’s first sandals were released in 1963, not long before Fraser slipped them on.

They were so comfortable that she didn’t care if they were ugly. Birkenstocks provided value because they solved a problem. They were basically Hokas for hippies.

Fraser took the sandals back to the U.S. and wrote to the Birkenstock family asking if she could sell them to Americans. They said yes to the dressmaker. At first, it seemed unwise. The owners of local shoe stores wouldn’t talk to her, and doctors treated her like a threat to the podiatry business.

She was desperate when a friend mentioned that a group called the Health Food Association was hosting a national convention nearby, which is how she found herself in a San Francisco hotel pitching sandals to people who sold lentils.

She needed to find people who didn’t mind how their shoes looked. As it turns out, they were the kind of people who owned health-food stores. Because they spent all day on their feet, they chose function over fashion. Fraser knew there would be a market for Birkenstocks when she spotted a woman at the convention shuffling around in nylons while carrying shoes that she couldn’t wear.

“The woman tried on a pair,” she wrote, “and bought them despite her husband’s protests.”

Once she had a foothold, Fraser began working out of her Bay Area home in 1967, calling her distribution company Birkenstock Footprint Sandals. She later renamed it Birkenstock USA.

She couldn’t have picked a better time or place for Birkenstocks to come plodding into the U.S. They would have crossed the ocean eventually, but the sandals became a symbol of rebellion because they landed in the heart of the counterculture, when and where people were allergic to the mainstream and willing to wear their antiestablishment values on their feet. “It was this perfect moment,” said Andrea Schneider-Braunberger, the curator of Birkenstock’s historical archives. “The culture was ready for such modern, convention-breaking shoes.”

Fraser worked closely with the Birkenstock family and shared their complete obsession with Birkenstocks. They made the shoes and decisions for the entire company based on her feedback.

The name of the funny-looking sandal that caught her eye was the “Original Birkenstock-Footbed sandal,” but Fraser told her German partners that American women were never going to buy something called “Original Birkenstock-Footbed sandal.” They took her marketing advice and branded the single-strapped sandal the “Madrid.” It remains one of the company’s top sellers.

It took six years for Fraser to venture beyond health-food stores and move into actual footwear stores. But that timing also turned out to be advantageous. By then, people were ready to buy Birkenstocks, and she was better at selling them.

She knew they intrigued baby boomers who didn’t want to look like their mothers and fathers. As it happens, their children don’t mind looking like them. Now, boomers and millennials make up almost the exact same percentage of Birkenstock’s consumers, and the company’s Arizona sandals and Boston clogs can be found in high schools and retirement homes.

The business is also barely recognisable from when she sold Birkenstock USA to her employees and retired in 2002. It was later folded into the German parent company, which is run by Oliver Reichert, the first person outside the Birkenstock family to be the CEO. Arnault’s L Catterton invested in 2021 with eyes on this week’s IPO.

Birkenstock has expanded into sneakers, boots and sandals in wool, shearling and waterproof material. Its proudly frumpy sandals meant to free women from the norms of fashion have become posh enough for celebrities, models and collaborations with Manolo Blahnik. The people who once turned up their noses at them now put their feet in them. And the company’s dominant market is the U.S.

None of that would have been possible without Margot Fraser.

Neither would the final scene in “Barbie.”

To sell more sandals to more Americans, she was always begging her partners for more colours, so Fraser would have been delighted to see what’s on the feet of another woman named Margot.

She’s wearing a pair of pink Birkenstocks.

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Cruise Lines Pursue Greener Journeys Ahead of New Climate Rules

AMSTERDAM—The global cruise industry is trying to go green ahead of a wave of new climate rules. Getting it done involves managing high costs, a dearth of renewable fuel and pressure from regulators and environmental groups.

Cruise operators are buying new ships that can run on alternative fuels, redesigning hulls to move more efficiently through the water and adding electricity hookups for when their ships are at port, where they otherwise might pump out toxic exhaust.

Carnival, the world’s biggest cruise company, has equipped more than half of its fleet to plug into local power grids when docked. Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings have ships on order that the companies say will be able to run on methanol. MSC Cruises uses a digital platform to analyse weather, fuel consumption and other data to optimise its ships’ efficiency.

The companies are preparing for new rules that will require them to pay for some of their emissions and meet new targets in transitioning to cleaner fuels. They also expect that global regulations could tighten further. Cruise lines, like other parts of the shipping industry, are pushed to act quickly and thoroughly because ships that are ordered today are likely to be in operation for decades.

“We build ships now that last 40 years,” said Torstein Hagen, chairman of cruise company Viking, which has ships on order that will be equipped to use renewable hydrogen. “We’d better get it right.”

Complicating the industry’s investments is the high cost of building and fuelling eco-friendly ships after some cruise operators racked up billions of dollars in debt during the pandemic. Cleaner renewable fuels are expensive and aren’t yet available or used in large quantities. Just 34 of the world’s ocean-cruise ports—roughly 2%—have electrical hookups, according to industry figures.

The number of passengers taking oceangoing cruises is expected to jump this year to more than 31 million, according to industry group Cruise Lines International Association, up from about 20 million last year and about 6% above 2019 levels, before the pandemic largely shut down the industry.

That revival has put renewed pressure on port cities, as some seek limits on visits by cruise ships, and added to concerns from environmentalists about the industry’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions.

Although cruise ships are responsible for a tiny portion of overall human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, their onboard services contribute to higher emissions on average compared with cargo ships, according to industry estimates.

Cruises are also discretionary—nobody must go on a cruise—a point that environmentalists raise in their calls for fast action from the industry.

Faig Abbasov, director for shipping at environmental group Transport & Environment, said some cruise companies are investing in technology that can sharply reduce their emissions once it is in use—such as hydrogen fuel cells or engines that can run on green methanol—but the overall industry isn’t moving quickly enough.

New environmental rules are set to take effect over the coming years.

Shipping companies whose vessels start or end voyages in Europe, including those that run large cruise ships, will have to start paying for a portion of their emissions beginning next year through the EU’s emissions-trading system. A separate EU law will compel shipping companies to progressively increase their use of lower-emission fuels beginning in 2025, and ports in the bloc that are used frequently by cruise and containerships will need to provide onshore electricity connections by 2030.

California already has state-level rules that require cruise ships to plug into shore power or otherwise sharply curb their emissions while at high-traffic ports including Los Angeles and Long Beach.

And the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations organisation, in July committed to new greenhouse-gas emission reduction targets. The IMO also has rules for energy efficiency and carbon intensity in the shipping industry.

Regulations are “the only way that you can seriously drive this kind of massive step change in what we’re doing as an industry,” said Linden Coppell, MSC Cruises’ vice president for sustainability. Incoming rules will affect the kinds of ships the company orders in the future, how it transitions to alternative fuels and efforts to improve the vessels’ efficiency, she said.

Cruise companies are moving ahead with green investments despite the debt that some of them racked up during the pandemic.

Carnival said it has fewer new ships on order than at any point in recent decades. However, the company said it hasn’t significantly reduced capital expenditures, which include investments in sustainability-related technologies. Royal Caribbean said its sustainability commitments remained steadfast during the pandemic.

Norwegian has indicated in earnings reports that compliance with environmental rules and its own climate commitments will be costly. The company announced plans for two new methanol-ready ships earlier this year.

The biggest cruise companies “have tremendous access to capital and continue to invest in sustainable technologies,” said Ivan Feinseth, director of research and analyst at Tigress Financial Partners.

Not every move to alternative technology is winning fans. LNG emits less carbon dioxide and significantly fewer air pollutants than the heavy fuel oil used in many ships. But environmental groups say any climate benefits are overshadowed by the escape of unburned methane, a potent contributor to global warming, into the atmosphere.

“LNG is the best thing out there today,” said William Burke, Carnival’s chief maritime officer and a retired vice admiral with the U.S. Navy. He said ships that are built to use LNG will also be capable of running on bio or synthetic forms of the fuel in the future.

Carnival is working with manufacturers to reduce the release of methane and will have more efficient engines in newer ships, he said.

Green methanol, which can be produced from biomass or by using renewable electricity, is gaining ground as a viable alternative fuel for the shipping industry, in part because it can be stored at room temperature.

Norwegian expects to take delivery of two methanol-ready ships in 2027 and 2028. Mark Kempa, the company’s chief financial officer, acknowledged on an earnings call earlier this year that the ships would cost more, but added, “going green is not free.”

Privately owned cruise company Viking, which has a fleet of 10 ocean vessels, says it sees renewable hydrogen as the best future fuel. The company ordered ships that can run on both hydrogen and traditional marine fuels, and its Viking Neptune vessel has hydrogen fuel cells on board to test out the technology. But supplies of the fuel are still limited.

“We can’t solve the world’s hydrogen supply problem,” Hagen said. He said the company plans to increase its use of the fuel as it becomes more available. “When that happens, then we are prepared.”

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Why the cost of renting a city apartment is now on par with houses

The median asking rent for an apartment in Australia’s capital cities is now on par with houses at $600 per week. This follows an extraordinary almost 25 percent surge in city apartment rents over the past year alone, compared with a 13.2 percent lift in house rents, according to Domain’s September quarter rent report.

The report’s findings are remarkable given units have reliably offered cheaper accommodation than houses historically. The $600 per week median was recorded across the combined capital cities, whereas in regional areas, median unit rents are still well below houses at $450 per week compared to $520 per week. The report reveals the Australian market has gone through the longest period of continuous rental price growth on record. The September quarter marked the 10th consecutive quarter of house rental growth (up 3.4 percent)and the 9th consecutive quarter of unit rental growth (also up 3.4 percent).

Apartment rents have surged the most over the past year in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, where weekly rents have risen by about 20 percent to record highs of $680, $520 and $550, respectively. Unit rents are also at a record high in Adelaide at $450 and Perth at $500. Across the other capitals, median unit rents are $450 in Hobart, $520 in Darwin and $550 in Canberra.

The key traditional drivers in Australia’s long-term shift to apartment living have been greater supply of apartments than houses, especially in popular urban suburbs with major infrastructure, and comparative affordability. Another factor is the increasing number of Australians living alone. Some are younger people who are increasingly delaying marriage until later in life. Australia also has an ageing population, so there is a rising number of older people living alone following the death of a spouse or the end of a marriage.

Exacerbating current demand for apartments is an undersupply. New apartment approvals have fallen to their lowest levels in a decade, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Approvals have dropped by 15.8 percent over the past year amid the construction industry grappling with a shortage of materials and labour.

Domain’s rent report also showed that record weekly house rents were reached or sustained in Sydney at a median of $720, Melbourne at $550, Brisbane at $590, Adelaide at $550, Perth at $600, and Darwin at $650 during the September quarter. In the other capitals, median house rents are $530 in Hobart and $655 in Canberra.

Canberra was the only city not recording a record unit or house rental value over the quarter. Interestingly, the ACT is the only state or territory with a rental cap in place. The cap limits landlords to annual rental increases at the territory’s CPI rate for rents plus 10%. The Federal Greens recently lobbied for a temporary cap across Australia to help tenants cope with a runaway market, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said such propositions were a matter for each state and territory to consider separately.

Domain chief of research and economics, Dr Nicola Powell said the previous “extreme paces” of rental price growth had now ended but they were still relatively high. Dr Powell estimates that Australia needs 40,000 to 70,000 more rental homes right now to balance the market. “This is a significant amount of rental stock needed to balance out the rental market today, and not taking into account future population growth and people arriving from overseas and people relocating,” Dr Powell said.

New CoreLogic data shows rental vacancy rates have fallen to new record lows of 1 percent across the combined capital cities and 1.2 percent across the combined regional markets. CoreLogic economist Kaytlin Ezzy said: “Record high net overseas migration, fuelled by a combination of an increased flow of new arrivals and weaker departure numbers, coupled with a continued shortfall in rental listings, saw the vacancy rates falling to new record lows.”

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Disney Goes All In on Sports Betting

In early 2019, an analyst asked Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger if sports betting could coexist with the House of Mouse’s brand. He said he didn’t see the company facilitating gambling in any way.

Just four years later, the world’s most beloved name in family entertainment is going all-in on sports betting.

In August, the company struck a 10-year deal with sports-betting company Penn Entertainment to bring gambling to Disney’s ESPN sports network. Sports fans will be able to wager on games on their phones through a new app called ESPN Bet that accepts bets through Penn’s sportsbook.

The idea of gambling under the same roof as Disney has roiled some company executives and employees who feel it will damage the brand that is synonymous with princesses and talking cartoon ducks. In the last year, at least one large investor warned Disney that it might have to sell some of its Disney stake if the company embraced betting.

But for ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro and Iger, who saw his two adult sons glued to gambling apps on their smartphones, the chance to engage a younger male audience, and the money, were eventually too good to pass up. Penn will pay Disney $1.5 billion in cash while ESPN will receive warrants worth about $500 million to purchase shares in the gambling company. Penn will operate the app and Disney will help market it.

This is how sports in America works. Fans watch and they bet—particularly young men between the ages of 18 and 34—often making multiple complicated bets during a live sporting event. They can wager on how many 3-pointers a basketball player will sink or who will catch the final fly ball in a baseball game. It is huge on college campuses.

Wagering on games ballooned after a 2018 Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for states to adopt it. It is legal in 38 states and the District of Columbia. Last year, online sports gambling generated $7.6 billion in revenue—the amount companies received after paying out winning bets. Next year, revenue is expected to grow to $11.8 billion, according to Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, an industry consulting firm.

ESPN, like more traditional TV networks, is struggling with the decline in cable TV subscribers and the rising cost of sports-broadcasting rights. Sports leagues and legions of startups have embraced gambling, while large media companies have homed in on betting as one of the best ways to expand.

But Disney employees, more than most other workers, feel that their company stands for a set of wholesome ideals—something more than making money.

In mid-2022, Jenny Cohen, a Disney veteran who had been promoted to head of corporate social responsibility a year earlier, raised concerns about a potential foray into sports betting to top executives at Disney’s Burbank, Calif., headquarters and leaders at ESPN, urging them to reconsider their plan to strike a deal with a sports-betting operator.

She told her colleagues, and Disney’s CEO at the time, Bob Chapek, that sports betting would tarnish the Disney brand, according to people familiar with the discussions. Consumers could start associating Disney with gambling addiction, she argued. As this discussion brewed, Disney was already managing a crisis with many employees who felt their employer didn’t take enough of a stand against a Florida bill that prohibits instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity for young students, known by its opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation.

Around the same time, BlackRock, the investment giant which uses socially-conscious environmental, social and governance—or ESG—criteria to guide some of its investing decisions, contacted Disney’s investor relations staff. It warned Disney that if the company did a deal with a sportsbook, ESG rules may require some of its European funds to reduce their Disney stakes, people familiar with the matter said.

Disney is also contending with a fresh push by activist investor Nelson Peltz’s Trian Fund Management to secure multiple board seats, The Journal reported this week. Trian thinks Disney’s stock is undervalued and that Disney needs a board that is more focused and accountable. It is unclear what other changes the hedge fund plans to seek. Peltz and Trian haven’t publicly taken a position on ESPN and gambling.

There are Disney fans, Disney+ subscribers and theme park visitors that likely have no idea that ESPN is part of Disney, but internally, Disney’s businesses are perceived as interconnected parts of one overarching corporate brand: a place where dreams come true. The ESPN+ streaming service is offered as part of Disney’s streaming bundle, and ESPN promotes shows from other Disney-owned networks during its broadcasts, and vice versa. This week, for example, ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel appeared on ESPN2’s football show the “Manningcast.”

“My job is to protect the brand at all costs,” said Pitaro, in an interview. “I am the custodian of the ESPN brand, and we needed to make sure that whoever we went with on this journey was someone that we could trust.”

Disney first began flirting with sports betting in March 2019, when it completed its $71.3 billion acquisition of Fox’s major entertainment assets, which included a 6% stake in sports betting company DraftKings.

At the time, some of Iger’s top lieutenants urged him to take a bigger ownership stake in the gambling company, but Iger resisted, arguing that betting wasn’t on-brand for Disney.

Without his blessing, sports-betting discussions stalled until Iger stepped down as CEO in February of 2020, and the board named his veteran head of parks, Chapek, to replace him.

Chapek had a much different view of gambling. He told associates that he was “not that precious about the Disney brand,” compared with his predecessor when it came to sports betting.

He began exploring a potential partnership with a sportsbook, and Disney started up talks with DraftKings, which now has more than 30% share of the sports-betting market. At the time, DraftKings had a marketing arrangement with ESPN, by which it would link ESPN.com readers to make online bets through DraftKings.

Despite Cohen’s objections, Disney signalled that it was seeking a new deal worth around $3 billion over a decade, and Chapek and Pitaro gave news interviews, saying that ESPN customers wanted a “seamless” betting option as part of the sports-viewing experience. ESPN had already embraced sports betting within its programming, including in its “Daily Wager” show, which analyses odds for sports matchups.

Pitaro intensified his matchmaking efforts with DraftKings, but from the outset, the two companies were far apart. Disney asked for tens of millions of dollars a year more than DraftKings was willing to pay, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Eventually, DraftKings offered around $100 million a year for ESPN to use its sportsbook, but DraftKings wanted its brand included on any app or marketing as part of the deal. That was a nonstarter for Pitaro. He wanted solo ESPN branding.

His team began negotiating with Rush Street Interactive, a smaller, Chicago-based gambling company. RSI offered ESPN more than $100 million a year, but a deal never came together.

Pitaro felt pressure to secure ESPN’s future, particularly among young male fans who increasingly expect betting to be a seamlessly-integrated part of the sports-watching experience. By this time, Iger had returned to Disney as its CEO after the board ousted Chapek in November of last year, and the company was hard at work on plans to remake ESPN as a streaming-focused platform. Iger had told interviewers that he had seen the writing on the wall for the traditional TV business, which was showing signs of being on its deathbed.

Overall, Disney was struggling. Its foundering share price had drawn attacks from activist investors including both Peltz and Dan Loeb’s Third Point, its streaming business was bleeding cash and its whole traditional television business, more than just ESPN, was suffering as more people dropped their cable TV subscriptions in favour of streaming. Disney is currently exploring potential strategic partners for ESPN and has had talks with major sports leagues about it.

Iger quickly set about trimming fat, announcing $5.5 billion in budget cuts and the elimination of 7,000 positions, around 3% of Disney’s total global workforce.

Soon, Iger warmed up to sports betting. His adult sons’ use of sports-betting apps opened his eyes to its popularity with a younger audience, he told associates. He said that it is “inevitable” that sports-watching and sports-betting will go hand-in-hand, and he blessed Pitaro’s efforts to find Disney a partner. Getting involved with gambling was the only way to ensure that ESPN is able to continue to attract younger audiences, he reasoned.

Along came Penn, the Wyomissing, Pa.-based casino operator turned sports-betting company that also needed a makeover after it got into regulatory and reputational trouble over its ownership of sports-media company Barstool Sports, founded by Dave Portnoy. Several women have accused Portnoy of sexual misconduct—allegations he has denied.

Penn runs casinos and racetracks in smaller regional markets like Lake Charles, La., Biloxi, Miss., and York, Pa., and its CEO Jay Snowden wanted to remake the company into a digital gambling powerhouse.

Snowden first met Pitaro in his office for about a 90-minute meeting earlier this year. Pitaro left thinking Snowden was “a straight shooter” who knew what he was doing, the ESPN executive said.

Pitaro quickly deployed teams working on ESPN’s sports-betting, tech, strategy and marketing into parallel talks with Penn to flesh out what a potential partnership could look like. He said Penn’s technology, including the functionality and design of the app, stood out. In addition, Disney views Penn’s tiny market share as an advantage because ESPN can have more control over branding the app and not have to share the spotlight with a better-established player, according to people familiar with Disney’s stance.

There was a key requirement to move forward with a Disney deal. Penn had to dump Barstool.

When Penn began acquiring Barstool in a series of transactions starting in 2020, the gambling company hoped it would help it build a young customer base. Barstool runs an extensive sports-content operation that has drawn criticism for sexism and some of its employees’ crude behaviour. Gambling regulators ultimately fined Penn for violating rules about marketing to people under the age of 21 and scrutinised advertisements that appeared to promise financial success. Barstool said it was being sarcastic.

Pitaro informed Iger of the talks in an early June meeting, and the CEO liked the idea of a partnership with Penn. Pitaro had long held out hope that Disney could fashion a deal with DraftKings, a market-leading online gambling company that was seen by some inside Disney as a natural fit, but the negotiations had become bogged down.

Pitaro suggested that they end talks with DraftKings. Iger, who felt that the negotiations had gone on too long and DraftKings’ demands weren’t reasonable, agreed. Besides, Penn was offering a better price. It was time to move on.

In June, Pitaro presented the Penn deal to Disney’s board at a meeting in Anaheim, Calif., and in early August, the day before Disney was set to announce third-quarter financial results, Disney announced the $2 billion deal.

Penn needed to rebrand the Barstool Sportsbook app into ESPN Bet under the new deal. To quickly make room for Disney, the company sold Barstool back to Portnoy for $1, just six months after fully acquiring the company. Penn kept the database of 1.5 million online betting customers it has accrued, which the company aims to retain under the ESPN name.

ESPN and Penn have the option to walk away from the partnership in three years if the venture hasn’t captured a minimum market share target. Snowden declined to say the exact target, but said it was around 10%.

“There’s only one ESPN,” Snowden said. “If we were going to make a pivot, there was really one option to do that, and that was with what is the only name that is truly synonymous with sports in the United States.”

ESPN sports programming won’t be pushed into the betting app when it launches in November so as not to slow down the betting experience, Snowden said. Instead, the goal is for ESPN viewers and readers to easily switch back and forth between sports and the betting app.

Pitaro said that many on-air stars are eager to get involved with ESPN Bet, and the company plans to announce an expanded talent lineup to host and promote its gambling-related products and shows. ESPN forged a partnership with former NFL punter and foul-mouthed YouTube star Pat McAfee, who is known for hosting broadcasts in sleeveless T-shirts and making occasional off-colour jokes. He will promote ESPN Bet to his audience.

ESPN is also considering alternative broadcasts of games focused on betting, similar to the popular version of Monday Night Football hosted by former NFL stars and brothers Eli and Peyton Manning that airs on ESPN2 and ESPN+, and plans to promote betting to its growing fantasy-sports audience. Pitaro said its fantasy platform is expected to reach more than 12 million users this year, a 10% increase from the previous year.

“Getting into sports betting is a perceived business necessity for ESPN,” said John Kosner, a former ESPN executive who now runs Kosner Media. “I think this decision has to do more with ESPN’s manifest destiny than Disney’s position on branding.”