Teva Pharmaceuticals, the largest company domiciled in Israel, is a multinational pharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures, and distributes both patented and generic versions of ethical pharmaceuticals. In 2017, the company was in dire need of a turnaround plan based on a variety of factors: $17 billion in debt maturing in 2021; declining cash flows from its largest selling drug, Copaxone; intensified competitive challenges in its core generics business; and an inefficient organizational structure. In this case students are presented with detailed data on Teva's financial circumstances as well as an overview of the challenges facing the global pharmaceutical industry in order to determine whether the company can avoid the need for Chapter 15 protection.
As a French engineer, nothing predestined Patrick Hoffmann to ever launch and lead a small pig empire in Russia. What had started out as an ambitious high-technology pig multiplication facility in the region of Lipetsk had evolved over the period 2005-2018 into one of the country's premier multipliers, at the leading edge of genetics and pig raising techniques. The company expanded to cover multiple stages in the pig industry, from manufacturing concrete floor slats for the pig farms to farming 12,000 ha of land, producing high quality animal feeds, slaughtering animals, and further processing meat all the way to running eight French-style butcheries. The company now truly operated "from pitchfork to fork". But the journey was never over. The vertical integration had happened more by default than by strategic choice, and it was fair now to question the whole montage. Patrick had just been presented with the chance to integrate backward into genetic selection as their Danish supplier restructured. Retail and meat processing had been unqualified disappointments; should they continue to be involved? On the positive side, Patrick had just fielded a call from the governor of the region, informing him of another 12,000 ha of farm land for leasing. Unfavorable price evolutions in the industry also suggested some less efficient competitors would soon face financial distress, creating interesting acquisition opportunities. Learning objective: Doing business in Russia, agro-industries, vertical integration strategies, building teams, managing the value chain, technology as barrier to entry, innovation, genetics, growth management, entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial leadership, managing stakeholders, capital budgeting, business models, project management, growth financing.
Innovium has been focusing on disrupting an entrenched space. After getting product market fit the company wrestles with how to scale up, how to build a strong culture and how to raise more funds.
Nobel Prize in Economics S. Kuznets (71) said there were four kinds of countries: "developed, developing, Japan, and Argentina. Argentina can do things wrong, but its lack of humility and its ability to fascinate and generate expectations is undeniable". Aswath Damodaran defined Argentina as "that crazy and drunk uncle living in the attic of your house". When he is sober, he is wonderful, but when he is drunk, he does crazy things". At the beginning of 2015, the directors of a passenger transport company in Argentina (Campana Dos), developed a brilliant business through a corporate strategy that would only work in a chaotic market like Argentina, however they are facing a new challenge due to the political context in an election either a continuation of protectionist populism or a move towards an open economy. The directors evaluate a 2x2 decision matrix that has four possible scenarios (Invest- Do not invest // Demand Grows - Does not grow). Each one has a marginal value that is calculated by x6 EBITDAs. The company has a serious risk of bankrupting if any of the first three scenarios come true due to non-controllable factors. Students will face a complex decision that principals must make for which there is no concrete solution. At the beginning of 2015, the company directors faced a possible exponential growth of the population of 600,000 to 2.5 million inhabitants due to the discovery of the second largest global gas depot (Vaca Muerta). They had to decide whether to invest ARS $ 47 million (USD $ 5.5 million) (1.9 times the total of their assets and 29.3 times their net profit) to avoid demand, but this can lead the company to the Bankruptcy after twenty successful years. Students must ask themselves if Vaca Muerta was just a bluff to justify the governor's family investments -which evolved from 4.9% of participation in public works in 2003 to 55% of the public works in 2010- or was there really going to be an exponential growth in investments and population.
This Case presents the Internet retail battle in India among the e-commerce giants Flipkart, Amazon, and Snapdeal. The domestic player Flipkart had been a dominant player and was followed by Snapdeal until the global player Amazon entered in 2013. The competitive dynamics were focused on the marketplace model, basic logistic and delivery, and customer satisfaction. With the new regulations and technology disruption in the recent years, the competitive landscape shifted to private labels, artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics, and omni-channeling. As the competition got more and more intense, Flipkart - the first home-grown e-tailor- was determined to be the market leader.
In February 2018 New York-based coworking company WeWork was valued at approximately $20 billion, making it the fourth-most-valuable start-up in the U.S., behind only Uber, Airbnb, and SpaceX. WeWork had experienced explosive growth since its 2010 founding, however it was revealed, during a private bond offering in mid-2018, that the company had posted a net loss for 2017 of $884 million. WeWork's founders insisted that the company's reliance on innovative technology-along with its mission to "create a world where people make a life, not just a living"- would secure its future success. This case outlines WeWork's business model and growth strategy and asks students to consider whether its market position is unique and defensible-and whether or not its valuation is overstated.
As of early 2018, five U.S. technology companies-Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft-were among the largest companies in the world. Similarly, three Chinese technology firms-Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, or BAT-had emerged as global players due in part to the protection of China's "Great Firewall," which made it more difficult for foreign companies to compete in Chinese markets. As these companies continued to scale by branching into new businesses, such as voice AI and self-driving vehicles, they also faced new and challenging questions about user privacy. The European Union had recently passed the General Data Protection Regulation, a comprehensive set of consumer data protection laws that would require technology companies to make significant changes to their operating model. Meanwhile, social media giant Facebook was facing allegations that Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm, had accessed information on tens of millions of Facebook users without their consent, prompting calls for big technology firms to be more strictly regulated. How would the five U.S. companies and BAT respond to these concerns? And looking forward, in what ways would these big companies compete with one another, and which would come out ahead?
In March 2017, Jason Blum, the founder and chief executive officer of film and television production company Blumhouse Productions, has another blockbuster on his hands with the movie Get Out, produced for just $4.5 million. Remarkable returns for its micro-budget films were nothing new for Blumhouse: in fact, in recent years, Blum and his team are responsible for more such outsized successes than any other producer, especially in the horror genre. The company's approach to movie-making is quite different from that of the major studios: it is not afraid to bet on projects that other studios have passed on; it pays its key cast and crew members the minimum salary stipulated by industry unions and only pays out sizeable bonuses if a movie's box-office reaches certain levels; it gives its directors a great deal of creative control; and it decides on a film's release strategy only once the first cut is ready. Has Blum discovered a robust formula for success in the film business? And is his approach sustainable, even as other players in Hollywood might seek to copy Blumhouse's strategy?
Jonah Peretti, CEO of digital publishing company BuzzFeed, needs to decide how to respond to Facebook's announcement that it would prioritize posts from friends over content from publishers.
Master limited partnerships (MLPs) are limited partnerships that trade on public exchanges in the form of units, similar to common stock. MLPs have several advantages relative to traditional C corporations (C-corps) that have resulted in their frequent use to finance energy-infrastructure assets. The general partners (GPs) retain control of the assets placed in the MLP, can drop down assets to the MLP, often at advantageous prices, and receive incentive distribution rights (IDRs). IDRs increase the GPs' share of the distributions over time, which in turn affects the MLPs' cost of capital. MLPs do not pay taxes at the entity level, which increases the amount of cash that can be paid to GPs and unitholders. MLPs trade on the basis of their yield and the stability and growth of their distributions. This technical note provides a brief history of MLPs, a description of their key features and terms, and several approaches to valuing them.
The chief operating officer at Cambridge Cooling Systems (CCS), based in Cambridge, Ontario, was helping his senior team prepare for two conference calls, with Italy and India, where CCS had foreign subsidiaries. At first glance, the chief issue with Italy seemed to be a lack of response from the managing director for Europe to detailed questions posed by project management for CCS. The issue with India seemed to be an inability to issue and stick to sales goals, and the Cambridge project manager wanted to speak about this with the managing director for Asia as soon as possible. However, further analysis revealed issues with how the headquarters in Cambridge had been managing its subsidiaries. Communications had broken down, and a conference call or two would not resolve the problem.
In 2018, Inditex, based in Spain, was the largest specialist fashion retailer in the world, generating sales of $31.5 billion in 2017 from a portfolio of eight retail brands selling through a total of 7,475 stores located in 96 countries and from websites in 49 countries. Its largest brand, Zara, generated sales of $20.8 billion and operated 2,118 stores. Since its IPO in 2001, Inditex had grown sales an average of 14.3% per year and net profits by 16.3% per year, adding over 6,000 stores in the process, and its stock had significantly outpaced the FTSE 100. While many fashion retailers were retreating in the face of weak demand and competition from online retailers, Inditex grew like-for-like sales for the year in all concepts and geographies. Online sales were up 41% year-on-year, reaching 10% of total sales. For several years, the company had been slowing the growth in retail space and investing in large flagship stores to support its online business. Significantly, in late 2016 Inditex closed four small Zara shops in the company's hometown of La Coruña and opened a 54,000-square-foot store in its place. Indeed, in the last quarter of 2017, the net number of store additions turned negative for the first time. Meanwhile, online fashion specialists such as U.K.-based ASOS were growing rapidly, adding thousands of styles a week to their websites and providing thousands of pick-up and drop-off points (PUDOs) at local retail locations around the world to support their online sales. And then there was the threat of Amazon, which had been pushing into online fashion for over a decade. Was Inditex chairman and CEO Pablo Isla doing enough to turn the online threat into an opportunity?
Cowen Inc.'s broker-dealer, Cowen and Company, LLC, boasted a number of analysts who had made prescient stock calls on the basis of creative data analysis. Now Cowen Inc. had opened a new subsidiary, Kyber, which would attempt to monetize new data science products. Robert Fagin, head of research, had to consider what Kyber's risks were, even as the unit opened the possibility up for new revenue streams. How could Cowen continue to exploit its competitive advantage with data?
The chief operating officer at Cambridge Cooling Systems (CCS), based in Cambridge, Ontario, was helping his senior team prepare for two conference calls, with Italy and India, where CCS had foreign subsidiaries. At first glance, the chief issue with Italy seemed to be a lack of response from the managing director for Europe to detailed questions posed by project management for CCS. The issue with India seemed to be an inability to issue and stick to sales goals, and the Cambridge project manager wanted to speak about this with the managing director for Asia as soon as possible. However, further analysis revealed issues with how the headquarters in Cambridge had been managing its subsidiaries. Communications had broken down, and a conference call or two would not resolve the problem.
In Canada, the Budweiser brand of beer was managed by Anheuser-Busch InBev N.V.'s Labatt Breweries subsidiary in Toronto, Canada. In 2016, a senior manager noticed that fewer younger consumers—those aged 19 to 24—were drinking Budweiser beer. In response, the brand increased its investment in television advertising and initiated price incentives, but the sales volumes did not respond accordingly. The senior manager’s brand and research teams were tasked with determining which key messages to emphasize and which advertising vehicles to use to gain market share for this segment of the beer market. They started their work by reviewing consumer research on Budweiser's television advertisements. What could the teams do to increase Budweiser’s engagement with this young demographic?
In Canada, the Budweiser brand of beer was managed by Anheuser-Busch InBev N.V.'s Labatt Breweries subsidiary in Toronto, Canada. In 2016, a senior manager noticed that fewer younger consumers-those aged 19 to 24-were drinking Budweiser beer. In response, the brand increased its investment in television advertising and initiated price incentives, but the sales volumes did not respond accordingly. The senior manager's brand and research teams were tasked with determining which key messages to emphasize and which advertising vehicles to use to gain market share for this segment of the beer market. They started their work by reviewing consumer research on Budweiser's television advertisements. What could the teams do to increase Budweiser's engagement with this young demographic?
Discusses several aspect of the formal control structure of nonprofit organizations, distinguishing among the responsibility center structure, the program structure, the information structure, and a variety of administrative factors and behavioral considerations including the importance of addressing cooperation and conflict in a bureaucracy.