Tesla’s largest vehicle recall yet

Hey Superheroes,

Can you believe there’s just two more weeks until 2023 ends? 🤯

Global markets have had a pretty good upward trajectory these last couple of weeks, spurred further by Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s statement that interest rates have likely reached their peak.

Aside from the strong rally, here are some of this week’s biggest stories.

Tesla recalls over two million vehicles after nearly 1,000 crashes

Can you believe that Tesla has initiated its fourth vehicle recall in the last two years? 

Its latest one involves over two million cars – nearly all Tesla cars manufactured in the U.S. since 2012 – and comes after a two-year long investigation by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). 

Using information from 956 car crashes, the regulator found a correlation between driving accidents and the use of Tesla’s Autopilot software.

🚗 Software miss or drivers’ faults?

Autopilot is Tesla’s collection of features that allow the car’s tech to take control over the vehicle’s handling. Tesla’s different Autopilot packages range from the relatively common cruise control to full self-driving capabilities.

The feature that caused issues was Autosteer, which assists in keeping a car within a single lane.

The NHTSA found that drivers paid less attention to the road when Autosteer was switched on, leading to accidents. The regulator stated that Tesla needs to do more to prevent its misuse.

Furthermore the regulator found that some drivers were only given collision alerts less than a second before a crash – a bit too late for manual intervention.

🚗 Tesla’s rough road

While Tesla publicly disagreed with the NHTSA, it ended up recalling its vehicles anyway. The recall covers the Tesla models S, 3, X and Y produced in the U.S. between October 2012 and December 7, 2023.

The big news comes at a tough time for Tesla following its Q3 2023 market share of electric vehicles dropping to a new low. This year has also seen numerous price cuts for Tesla’s car models as Elon Musk attempts to keep prices competitive.

However it looks like investors have largely brushed the bad news off. Tesla shares are up 4.5% in the week to hit a new monthly high.

Did you know?

Mark Zuckerberg’s famously simple wardrobe of grey shirts are actually designed by Italian designer Brunello Cuccinelli and cost about US$400 each. 🤯

Here are some other splurges that “thrifty” CEOs have made.

The proposed marriage of Chemist Warehouse and Sigma Healthcare

Familiar with Chemist Warehouse? How about Amcal, PharmaSave and the orange and purple-themed Discount Drug stores? Now imagine all those big names joining together into one.

Yup – that’s what’s been shaking up the ASX this week. Chemist Warehouse and Sigma Healthcare announced that they’ve signed a deal to merge into one large conglomerate. 

While it’s still subject to regulatory and shareholder approval, the proposed merger would create an A$8.8b company.

That’s about as big as Qantas, Seek and Treasury Wine Estates. 🤯

🧃The juicy deets

Chemist Warehouse is currently privately-owned (yes its two co-founders are billionaires) and being much larger, it would own 86% of the merged company under the terms of the deal. 

Sigma would also need to hand over A$700m in cash for its smaller stake. 

To fund that, Sigma is raising cash through an equity raise. Eligible shareholders holding shares of the pharmaceutical company on 13 December 2023 will be invited to invest into the capital raise at $0.70 a share.

That’s a 33% discount from yesterday’s close. 

🤝 Bigger deal than it is 

The proposed merger would not only create the largest pharmaceutical group in Australia but also make it one of the largest retail companies to be a full-service wholesaler, distributor and franchisor.

Analysts also estimate that joining forces may collectively save them A$60m annually in costs, generating about A$495m in operating income a year.

Is that why Sigma Healthcare moved up to become one of Superhero’s most traded ASX stocks this week? 👀

🔦  Some other things we’re shining the Spotlight on:

DOW HITS RECORD HIGH: The Dow hit 37,000 on Wednesday following Powell’s comments, marking a new record high in its 127-year history. 

FMG STRIKES HOT: Fortescue Metals shares rallied to a new high yesterday reaching a valuation of A$82b for the first time. This comes as iron ore prices continue to defy downward expectations, lifting to US$135 a tonne. 

BIG X ON X: Disney and Comcast have both moved away from X (aka Twitter) following its CEO’s controversial comments. Instead the two media behemoths have increased advertising spend in Meta’s social media platforms by 40% and 6% respectively.

That’s all for this week’s Spotlight! 

Thanks for reading!

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