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Victoria's Secret owner sells controlling stake to private equity group – CBC.ca

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Victoria’s Secret, beset by falling sales and uncomfortable questions about its billionaire founder who has run the company for five decades, is being sold.

The company’s owner, L Brands, said that the private-equity firm Sycamore Brands will buy 55 per cent of Victoria’s Secret for about $525 million. The Columbus, Ohio company will keep the remaining 45 per cent stake.

Shares of L Brands, slid 12 per cent in premarket trading Thursday.

The selling price signifies a marked decline for a brand with hundreds of stores that booked about $7 billion in revenue last year.

Sales at its stores are in decline because competition is increasing and tastes are changing. Victoria’s Secret suffered a 12 per cent drop in same-store sales during the most recent holiday season. L Brands said Thursday that same-store sales declined 10 per cent at Victoria’s Secret during the fourth quarter.

At its peak, the underwear and lingerie brand was known for its catalogue filled with supermodels and a glitzy annual television special that mixed fashion, models and music. Amidst its struggles, Victoria’s Secret sales have continued to erode, the show has been pulled from network television and its stock — which traded at close to $100 in 2015 — now trades at around $24.

L Brands has also come under scrutiny because its CEO, Les Wexner, has ties to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was indicted on sex-trafficking charges.

Epstein started managing Wexner’s money in the late 1980s and helped straighten out the finances for a real estate development backed by Wexner in a wealthy suburb of Columbus. Wexner has said he completely severed ties with Epstein nearly 12 years ago and accused him of misappropriating “vast sums” of his fortune.

Wexner offered an apology at the opening address of L Brands’ annual investor day in Columbus last fall, saying he was “embarrassed” by his former ties with Epstein.

Wexner will step down after the transaction is completed and become chairman emeritus.

Wexner is the longest-serving CEO of an S&P 500 company. He founded what would eventually become L Brands in 1963 with The Limited retail store, according to the company’s website. Wexner owns approximately 16.71% of L Brands, according to FactSet.

Sycamore has about $10 billion in assets under management. The firm’s investment portfolio includes retailers such as Belk, Coldwater Creek, Hot Topic and Talbots.

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Netflix’s subscriber growth slows as gains from password-sharing crackdown subside

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Netflix on Thursday reported that its subscriber growth slowed dramatically during the summer, a sign the huge gains from the video-streaming service’s crackdown on freeloading viewers is tapering off.

The 5.1 million subscribers that Netflix added during the July-September period represented a 42% decline from the total gained during the same time last year. Even so, the company’s revenue and profit rose at a faster pace than analysts had projected, according to FactSet Research.

Netflix ended September with 282.7 million worldwide subscribers — far more than any other streaming service.

The Los Gatos, California, company earned $2.36 billion, or $5.40 per share, a 41% increase from the same time last year. Revenue climbed 15% from a year ago to $9.82 billion. Netflix management predicted the company’s revenue will rise at the same 15% year-over-year pace during the October-December period, slightly than better than analysts have been expecting.

The strong financial performance in the past quarter coupled with the upbeat forecast eclipsed any worries about slowing subscriber growth. Netflix’s stock price surged nearly 4% in extended trading after the numbers came out, building upon a more than 40% increase in the company’s shares so far this year.

The past quarter’s subscriber gains were the lowest posted in any three-month period since the beginning of last year. That drop-off indicates Netflix is shifting to a new phase after reaping the benefits from a ban on the once-rampant practice of sharing account passwords that enabled an estimated 100 million people watch its popular service without paying for it.

The crackdown, triggered by a rare loss of subscribers coming out of the pandemic in 2022, helped Netflix add 57 million subscribers from June 2022 through this June — an average of more than 7 million per quarter, while many of its industry rivals have been struggling as households curbed their discretionary spending.

Netflix’s gains also were propelled by a low-priced version of its service that included commercials for the first time in its history. The company still is only getting a small fraction of its revenue from the 2-year-old advertising push, but Netflix is intensifying its focus on that segment of its business to help boost its profits.

In a letter to shareholder, Netflix reiterated previous cautionary notes about its expansion into advertising, though the low-priced option including commercials has become its fastest growing segment.

“We have much more work to do improving our offering for advertisers, which will be a priority over the next few years,” Netflix management wrote in the letter.

As part of its evolution, Netflix has been increasingly supplementing its lineup of scripted TV series and movies with live programming, such as a Labor Day spectacle featuring renowned glutton Joey Chestnut setting a world record for gorging on hot dogs in a showdown with his longtime nemesis Takeru Kobayashi.

Netflix will be trying to attract more viewer during the current quarter with a Nov. 15 fight pitting former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson against Jake Paul, a YouTube sensation turned boxer, and two National Football League games on Christmas Day.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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All Magic Spells (TM) : Top Converting Magic Spell eCommerce Store

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