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Walmart has launched a pilot program to fast-track recent college graduates into store manager positions that pay a $200,000 salary within two years. The program — set to include both classroom and practical experience and pay a $65,000 starting salary to top performers — comes as the retail giant grapples with managerial shortages.
It might not be every 24-year-old English Lit graduate’s dream of winning the Booker Prize, but a six-figure job as the manager of a big-box store sure beats that unpaid internship or $15-an-hour barista gig. | | | • | | Many companies have paused their Russia operations, but McDonald's and Renault are getting out for good. | | • | | Private equity shop KKR is sharing hundreds of millions in earnings from its latest turnaround deal with the workers who made it happen. | | • | | Eighty million properties in the US are at risk of wildfire damage, study finds. | | | | |  | Global Economy | No More Pause: McDonalds and Renault Exit Russia for Real | | “Unusual and delicious.” That is how one woman described McDonald's food to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on the day the fast food franchise’s first Soviet location opened in Moscow in 1990.
On Monday, McDonald’s “delicious” food departed Russia under unusual circumstances — the company announced it plans to sell its Russian business and “de-arch” all franchises in the fallout of war. French automaker Renault announced it’s hitching its own ride out of the country. | Old McDonald Sold a Farm | | Many multinational food and restaurant brands such as Starbucks, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and KFC, have paused operations in Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine. Few have taken the radical step of leaving altogether. “Some might argue that providing access to food and continuing to employ tens of thousands of ordinary citizens is surely the right thing to do,” wrote McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski, in a frank letter to franchisees. “But it is impossible to ignore the humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Ukraine.”
McDonald’s plans to remove its name, logo, brand, and menu from all of its Russian restaurants, sell the remaining operations to a local buyer, and keep its trademarks in the country to protect against infringement. Russian state news agency TASS said McDonald’s locations will open under a new name next month. It’s a far cry from three decades ago, when the Golden Arches entered the Soviet Union as a symbolic ambassador of Western capitalism, signaling the end of the Cold War. Now, the company leaves behind a significant, though not devastating, chunk of business: | • | | McDonald’s owns 84% of its Russian stores, and restaurants in Russia and Ukraine accounted for 9% of its annual revenue last year, or roughly $2 billion. The two countries accounted for 3% of operating income. | | • | | McDonald’s expects to record a $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion non-cash charge to exit Russia. That may be more appealing than the $50 million a month, or 5 to 6 cents per share, in real cash that it’s been losing to maintain shuttered assets. | | | | Shift to Reverse: Renault was a more recent entrant into Russia than McDonald's, but its acquisition of iconic carmaker Lada in 2016 was further proof of how globalized economic relations had come since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Renault plans to sell its 68% stake in Lada parent AvtoVAZ to a Russian state entity for a single ruble, though the agreement includes buyback rights should Renault want to return. Considering that AvtoVAZ sold 350,000 vehicles, or 12% of Renault’s total last year, it just might.
The Takeaway: Western banks, including UniCredit and Citigroup, are exploring swapping assets with Russian banks in their own bid to get out for good, according to the Financial Times. The hope for a ceasefire or end to the war in Ukraine seems dim, suggesting that BlackRock CEO Larry Fink was right when he said the conflict will mark the end of the last three decades of growing globalization. | | | | | | Private Equity | Employees Share in KKR’s $3 Billion Sale of CHI Overhead Doors |  | | There is no shortage of political campaign ads demonizing private equity firms for snapping up companies, laying off workers, and selling them piece by piece. It’s practically a cliché at this point, and a reliable crutch when someone running for reelection needs a Wall Street bogeyman.
One private equity giant, KKR, is turning the cliché on its head — the firm’s latest deal, announced Monday, will put hundreds of millions of dollars into the pockets of the workers at CHI Overhead Doors — a garage-door manufacturer it’s selling for $3 billion. | Sharing Shares is Caring | | Make no mistake: KKR is making a killing on the sale of Arthur, Illinois-based CHI. Seven years after paying $600 million for the company, KKR is flipping it for five times that — good for the PE firm’s highest return on a US buyout in three decades.
Still, KKR is not exactly playing winner-takes-all. Pete Stavros, the shop’s co-head of private equity in the US, has championed boosting the fortunes of the working class by giving equity stakes to the junior and hourly workers of KKR-owned companies. All of the roughly 25 companies that make up KKR’s US-based industrial holdings have agreements which grant employees, including factory workers and truck drivers, stock in addition to wages and benefits. Simply put, if KKR turns a company around and makes a profit, the employees get to share in it: | • | | On average, a CHI hourly worker will receive $175,000 from the sale. Some veteran employees will get over $400,000. Even those who joined just last year can expect about $40,000; new hires will get $20,000. All told, $360 million is going to the company’s 800 employees. | | • | | “It is life-altering,” Josh Ryan, an assembly-line supervisor, told The Wall Street Journal. “I can’t explain how much it’s going to change — not just people’s lives here — it’s going to change this entire community.” | | | | How They Did It: KKR brought in consultants to help supervisors work with staff, aiming to cut down on steel waste, speed up manufacturing, and deliver inventory more efficiently. Factory workers offered assembly-line solutions, truck drivers proposed more efficient routes, and CHI’s revenue doubled, while its profit margin grew from 21% to 35% since 2015.
What’s Next: KKR is extending the model to its entire buyout portfolio. Last month, Stavros launched a nonprofit called Ownership Works to help companies implement equity and ownership programs for their employees. Speaking to Axios, he called the meeting at which KKR told CHI employees what they had earned “the most rewarding moment of my career.” | | | | | | SPONSORED BY BOXABL | The Problem is Clear. The Solution is Here. | | Housing prices. Housing shortages. Mortgage rates.
These three concepts have soaked up more collective airtime than, just about, anything in recent memory.
Hyperbole aside, the building crisis is material.
Boxabl has set out to change the construction paradigm by solving two major problems 1) sustainability and 2) affordability: | • | | Boxabl’s innovative room module, the Casita, folds up into a shippable dimension, meaning it can be transported from location to location and assembled in just a few hours. | | • | | With over 4,000 paid deposits and 80,000 reserved Casitas, Boxabl’s factory is already up and running and working on shipping its first government order. | | | | | | | | Climate Change | New Study Shows US Properties Face Widespread Risk of Wildfires | Climate change is making arid regions more susceptible to wildfires. Just how at risk is the average American home? A new report from non-profit research firm First Street Foundation, published Monday, claims to mark the first major attempt to make property-level wildfire-risk scores freely available. It shows trillions of dollars worth of property value is at risk of wildfire damage in the next three decades. Time to punch in your zip code and pray that your abode abides in a climate-change goldilocks zone. | In the Line of Fire | | Combining publicly available data from federal, state, and local government sources with millions of simulations of wildfire behavior and satellite imagery, First Street was able to model the degree of potential exposure for individual properties across the contiguous 48 states. The results are not all that surprising: states in the western and southwestern US will continue to face an increased risk of exposure to wildfires.
Just in the past few years, wildfires have caused tens of billions of dollars in property damage. Climate scientists have long warned the trend will only get worse, and now First Street has provided citizens with a tool to assess just how bad the damage could be: | • | | Nearly 80 million US residential and commercial properties face some risk of wildfire over the next 30 years, the study reports. Using First Street’s findings, real-estate listing service Realtor.com projects $8.8 trillion in property value is at risk, representing roughly one in five single-family homes. | | • | | One-and-a-half million properties have a 26% probability of being licked by a wildfire in the next three decades, while another 2.7 million face “severe risk,” calculated at a 14-26% probability, and 49.4 million homes have a less-than-1% chance of wildfire damage. | | | | A Dose of Realty: Realtor.com already incorporates First Street’s flood-risk data into its home listings, and says it will now include the fire-risk data as well. The tool could become a key feature of home listing — and pricing — in the near future. | | | | | | Extra Upside | • | | No more Mr. Nice Fly: after getting rejected twice, JetBlue is launching a hostile bid for Spirit Airlines. | | • | | All aboard the ride-share: Uber announced it is adding chartered and private buses to its app. | | • | | The S&P booked its worst 4-month start to the year since 1939, but ultra-wealthy investors aren’t exactly selling their Bentleys. That’s because they can dip into alternative investments with low correlations to traditional markets. And with Yieldstreet, so can you. Whether you’re targeting income, growth, or just a well-balanced portfolio — you can access exclusive investments previously reserved for the Icahns and Ackmans of the world. Fine tune your portfolio today with Yieldstreet. | | | | | | |  | Just For Fun | | | | | Written by Sean Craig and Brian Boyle. | Disclaimer | | | Boxabl's Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA / SIPC.This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. For more information about this offering, please view Boxabl's offering circular and risks associated with this offering. The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between The Daily Upside’s in-house sponsored content team. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. The Daily Upside may receive monetary compensation from the issuer, or its agency, for publicizing the offering of the issuer’s securities. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice. This is a sponsored ad. For additional information, please see Boxabl 17b Disclosure on the campaign page. | | | | | No longer want to receive these emails? Unsubscribe here. Copyright © 2022 The Daily Upside, LLC., All rights reserved. 1230 York Avenue, Box 154, New York, NY 10065 | | | | |
