Business

BBQs Cook Fish, Too – Beware the Weber, Traeger IPOs

BBQ company insiders are trying to put all you fish directly onto hot coals via their IPOs.

Published

11 months ago

July 28, 2021

Francisco D'Greenspan

As we all know, Covid-19 policies have created an interesting array of winners and losers. Restaurants, travel and mall-based retail? Wah, wah. Meanwhile, any company remotely tied to housing, remodeling or recreation has been on absolute fire.

So what if your traditionally slow-growth, low-margin business suddenly had its best year ever by a wide margin? You’d probably think very seriously about trying to sell it.

That is exactly what is happening with the spate of BBQ-related IPOs that are about to pour onto this market.

Are the upcoming initial public offerings of Traeger Pellet Grills and Weber good ideas for your investment portfolio? Be very careful.

First, it’s highly likely they’ve taken the route of public markets because they have nowhere else to go. Truly, who is Traeger’s logical acquirer? In a bygone era, Sears might have represented a possible exit but such buyers no longer exist. Maybe one of the few large competitors in this highly-fragmented industry like Weber? Whoops – they’re going public, too!

Focusing on Weber, what a story they seem to have on their hands, being able to claim 6-month revenue growth rates of over 60%! Wow!

Problem is, IBIS says annual growth of the bbq industry over the last 5 years averaged 4.7%, which means Weber caught lightning in a bottle thanks to this pandemic and they’re trying to cash in. Same with Traeger.

Unfair assessment, you say? Then why are roughly 2/3 of Traeger’s IPO shares being sold by insiders? That’s right, only 1/3 of this offering is to raise working capital for the company. The rest is insiders cashing out.

Hey, I’ll be the first to admit that Traeger grills are pretty cool. And these are familiar names so they may catch a bid based on that familiarity for a while, particularly if this housing market keeps steaming ahead. But by no means are these 10-year investments. If you just can’t help yourself and absolutely have to play with these shares, think more in terms of 10 weeks. Or 10 days.

Truly, how much longer can the explosive growth in our world of economic distortions last? Regardless, is there any way companies like this are going to keep posting 50%+ growth numbers? Pfffffffff.

Heck, as recently as 2019, Weber’s y-o-y revenues declined by 3%. That’s the nature of this industry – a little growth here, a little step back there… slow, stodgy, boring.

Even in Weber’s bounce back year of 2020, when revenues rebounded 15% compared to the prior full year? They made a paltry $88 million on $1.5 billion in revenues. Those are grocery store margins.

Yet despite this industry’s historically slow growth and non-existent margins, Weber’s market cap at IPO next week will be roughly $5 billion, meaning the shares will trade with a P/E of close to 60 like they’re some high-flying tech unicorn! Truly amazing stuff, but par for the course in today’s everything bubble.

As an aside, by the way, don’t even think about looking elsewhere in this sector, like to VELO and its recent announcement that the SPAC is taking BBQ Guys public. Does anyone recall what happened to BBQ retailers in the last economic downturn? If the phrase, “buh-bye,” doesn’t come to mind, you simply weren’t paying attention.

Make no mistake, all these BBQ industry IPOs are ‘greater fool’ investments at their finest. Sorry, but you’re the dumb money the insiders and their private equity backers are asking to buy their shares after one-time growth surges that probably surpassed even their wildest imaginations.

There’s an old saying in poker: if you look around the table and can’t figure out who the fish is, you’re the fish.

In this case, the BBQ company insiders are trying to put all you fish directly on their hot coals.

No, thanks. I’ll have a salad this time instead.

P.S. Yes, this is a new pen name but you probably know me. I’ve a new Twitter profile, too… please consider giving me a follow their and we’ll get this train rolling.

Photo by Martin Boose from FreeImages

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Related Topics:Business Featured Investing Wall Street

Francisco D'Greenspan

Americans sense things are on the wrong track, and have been for quite some time. Among our many challenges, for example: It can no longer be denied that income inequality is skyrocketing. But it is not capitalism that is enriching the few while slowly impoverishing the many. It is America’s long, slow turn away from free markets -- and the vital medium of exchange that underpins them -- that’s doing us in. This pseudonym is a nod to a somewhat-fringey, indulgent personal suspicion I hold with a 1% probability of being accurate: Alan Greenspan never ceased being Ayn Rand’s “man in Washington.” What if the well-known central bank chairman put on the show politicians wanted from him for years, all while secretly trying to return this world to rationality? Instead of destroying copper like D’Anconia, however, Greenspan destroyed money. Without realizing it now, some of you know me but I write under this pen name for two reasons. First: Of all the potential tyrannies we face today, by far the greatest threat to America is the misunderstanding, and therefore the ongoing destruction, of the U.S. dollar. Second: I write with the hope my ideas will stand on their own, aside from any political party, even apart from my own considerable charm and personality. Love me for my ideas, not because I'm beautiful. Politics, markets, more ... the things on which I’m qualified to opine will be unveiled here over time.

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Delegation: An Ongoing Phenomena

Failure to delegate effectively often happens because team leader don’t trust the people with whom they’re working

Published

4 days ago

June 29, 2022

Jeff Davidson

For most of your career, you’ve read or heard that one of the key approaches to getting things done is to delegate effectively. This presumes that you have others to whom you can delegate. In my contact with more than 950 organizations over the last two and a half decades, I’ve found increasingly that people have fewer resources, a lower budget, and less staff people. If they want to get something done, often they have to do it themselves!

Assuming you have others to whom you can delegate, the first or second time you personally tackle a particular task yields useful information. You learn more about the nature of the task, how long it takes, and whether or not you enjoy doing it.

By the third time, a task of the same ilk as those you’ve handled before often becomes best handled by someone reporting to you. Such tasks could involve updating a database, completing an interim report, or assembling meeting notes.

All that You Can

On the path to getting things done, your quest is to identify all those things that you can possibly delegate to others and then prepare those others so that they have a high probability of succeeding. In the course of your workday there may be only a handful of things that you alone need to do because of your experience, insight or specialized knowledge. Everything else that can be delegated should be.

Some people feel they have to take care of everything themselves and to this day haven’t been able to break the habit of “doing it all.” If this someone is in your seat right now, recognize that as a category of one, you can only get so much done.

Many managers and supervisors fail to delegate effectively because either they don’t fully trust the people with whom they’re working, or they’ve always been get-it-all-done-by-myself types.

Take Time before You Assign

Prior to delegating anything to anyone, take the time to actually prepare your staff for delegation. This would involve assessing an employee’s skills, interests, and needs. You could even ask people what new tasks and responsibilities they would like to assume. You might be surprised at the wide variety of responses you receive. There may be people on your staff right now who can help you with tasks you’ve been dying to hand off to someone but didn’t see how or when you could put them into play.

While you want to delegate to staff people who show enthusiasm, initiative and interest, or have otherwise previously demonstrated the ability to handle and balance several tasks at once, sometimes you have to delegate to someone who has not exhibited any of the above. In that case, delegate on a piece-meal basis.

Ensure that the staff person is able to effectively handle the small task or tasks he’s been assigned and does not feel swamped or overloaded. When the staff person demonstrates competence, you can increase the complexity of assignments and even the frequency with which you delegate.

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Business

Multi-tasking: More Harm than Good

In this day and age, where so much competes for our attention, it is easy to stray!

Published

2 weeks ago

June 16, 2022

Jeff Davidson

I belong to a local health club, and while I was there one day, I saw a woman get on the Stairmaster. I watched as she whipped out an mp3 player and started listening to music. Then, to my surprise, she reached into her gym bag, pulled out a book, and placed it on that ledge to read. I almost asked her if she would like a piece of gum!

Today, when so much competes for our attention, it is easy to stray! More often than we care to pretend, in the office and at home, we invite more than we can handle, and then act as though we didn’t. As individuals, throughout society, we are trained to believe that the ability to multi-task is a great attribute. Unfortunately, that’s a big mistake. Here’s why, and how to avoid multi-tasking in the future.

First Things First

What’s the fastest and easiest way to handle six tasks competing for our attention? Identify the most important task, second most important, third most important, and so on, then tackle the first and finish it all the way, move on to the second and complete it, then move all the way down the list.

Any other way of tackling those items, whether they are tasks for home or work, is simply not as efficient. The catch is, any other way is more psychologically satisfying. Why? It’s almost as if juggling projects, switching gears unnecessarily or abruptly, or leaving a job unfinished to start a new project gives you the opportunity to say to other people, “Hey, look at me! Look how involved I am! Look at how busy I am! I’m great at multi-tasking.” A multi-tasker, however, can’t compete with others who tackle their to-do list, one item at a time.

What about doubling up as a procedure for tackling a number of routine items or very simple tasks? You can eat dinner and read a book at the same time. Eating and reading at the same time is relatively harmless.

How about driving and talking on the cell phone at the same time? Driving requires your sharp attention, as does carrying on an intelligent conversation with someone else who is not present; doing both at the same time spreads your attention too thin, with often disastrous results. The same is true for projects you’re working on that require your best thinking.

Tips:
* give yourself 5 to 10 minute intervals to focus on the task at hand
* safe-guard your immediate environment to avoid interruptions
* acknowledge yourself whenever you stick to one task and finish it
* repeat all the above, often, knowing that ‘more often’ is better!

Your Undivided Attention

When you’re working on a new task, brainstorming, engaging in first-time thinking, or doing creative work, it’s vital to offer your complete and undivided attention to that one task before you. To dissipate your attention or otherwise stray means you are not going to do your best work.

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