Quiksilver Bankrupt

Advice: Don’t Buy Surf Co Shares!

Have you always wanted to be rich? Stay away from surf co shares says Australian newspaper.

It was in the middle of last year, and I might’ve been under the spell of share traders and even a little high when I wrote it, that I advised BeachGrit readers to buy Billabong shares, now. 

What was once a $A16 stock was selling for around sixty-cents. My rationale was this:

“Billabong have halved the number of retail stores and sold off a few of their biz’s, reducing debt, but, tellingly, a couple of hard-nosed US private-equity companies have bought hard into Billabong. And the CEO is Neil Fiske, who was instrumental in driving the fortunes of the king of US retail Les Wexner, turning Victoria’s Secret and A & F into the dirtiest of money spinners. On the creative side, Billabong has hired Roxy’s head designer to help drive Billabong gals, RVCA is starting to soar and Tiger Lily is still an unfulfilled buy.”

Did you buy?

If you were to type “Billabong Share Price” into your browser today you might be astonished to learn they’re now a bullish buck-fifty. It ain’t quite so simple. A shareholder vote last November approved the consolidation of shares at the rate of one for every five owned.

Which means they should be worth three bucks, yeah? Ah, a little under a buck and and half.

Oowee, sure do hope you didn’t listen to your financially illiterate pal DR.

Anyway, The Sydney Morning Herald isn’t quite so taken by surf company stocks. In his piece, SurfStitch and the less than swell history of surfing stocks (don’t you love how a newspaper is incapable of running a story about surfing without a flotilla of puns?), John McDuling writes:

“Australians love their surfing. But Australian investors have an uneasy relationship with surf-related stocks. Sure, shares in ASX-listed SurfStitch were up sharply on Thursday after its chief executive resigned and said he was in discussions with buyout firms to take the firm private. But there is quite a bit more to this story.

“SurfStitch, ostensibly an online retailer of surf products, floated less than two years ago at $1. The company was a bit of a market darling, with investors drawn to its content-driven business model, which made it more than just an online retailer of surf products.

“In November, with its shares up strongly since the float, the company raised $50 million for growth by selling shares to institutions at $2. The stock has traded lower ever since, but took a huge hit in the past month after the company backed away from its earnings guidance, saying it wanted flexibility to invest more in content. At the time, Morgan Stanley, which is positive on the stock, said ‘dropping guidance is rarely a good sign, particularly when it occurs three months after raising equity.

“If dropping guidance is not a good sign, then a subsequent resignation and looming bid by the CEO, when the stock is well below the level at which it recently raised equity is . . . interesting.”

Let’s read about Billabong and Quiksilver.

“In 2007, its (Billabong’s) market value was about $4 billion. Today it is worth $327 million.Or how about Quiksilver?

“By the early 2000s it was generating $US1 billion in annual revenue, but a string of disastrous acquisitions brought it crashing back to earth, and last year it filed for bankruptcy, after losing $US309 million. Is there something about the mentality of Australian surfing entrepreneurs that makes them poorly suited to the stockmarket? I don’t have a good answer to that, but it does seem that it’s a good idea to steer clear of surf stocks if you want to avoid a wipeout.”

Who needs a financial wipeout? Or a portfolio nose-dive? Or a choppy financial outlook?

Or…etc… etc…


Ryan Burch Chile
Burch on his technicolour twin-fin, ridden to great effect in Chile. | Photo: Brian Bielmann

Ryan Burch Goes Public!

Buy one of Ryan Burch's dazzling hand-shapes… for fifteen hundred dollars!

Do you recall feeling mystified upon viewing Ryan Burch’s section in Psychic Migrations? The one where he surfs in cursive on a self shaped fish at a Chilean Point break?

Did you, like me, vow to owe one of his fiberglass masterpieces? Well now you can!

Until just recently, Ryan Burch, the shaper, has been reclusive to average surfers. Despite the constant begging of those who frequent Cardiff, Swamis and other San Diego reefs, the freesurfing professional would graciously reply that he only shapes for himself and for friends – who just so happen to be some of the smoothest cats on two keels. Lucas Dirkse, Bryce Young and Derek Disney are some of the blessed few who, until now, have been able to get Ryan Burch out of the water and into the shaping room.

Now he hasn’t opened the floodgates for board orders out of being snobby or lazy, because he is neither.Ryan is business savvy and knows that limiting his output drives the hunger for one of his boards. “

When I went into the business of making surfboards,  I realized that the demand drives the price up,” says Burch. “But I want to be able to make boards for people and do them myself and make sure that I’m making something that I can be proud of rather than giving the designs to someone else to produce them for me. My favorite part about shaping is using my hands to build them myself and I don’t want to sacrifice that. The bummer is because I’m doing it that way, I have to turn people down. I just really want to be able to shape and get some boards out there slowly but surely.”

But if you want an asymmetrical, a glider or one of his now-famous fishes, they are going to set your melt your plastic. The last time Ryan did a run of boards for Hansen Surf shop, the small window of opportunity to own a Burch original was reflected in the price tag- $1,500 a piece.

Steep, yes, but worth it? Probably. That is, if you value being unique.

Oh and now you can bypass the rack altogether and order a custom, but not in person, Ryan is far too shy for that. Hit his website. 

I’ll bid ado with a question.

Do you want to be the guy paddling out to your local point on the CI Flyer that everyone has, or do you want to be the straddling the board that has every hipster in the lineup feeling envy? Do you want to fumble through a foam climb on a generic pop-out or express your panache with every cutback on a hand-shaped masterpiece?

Would you shell out 1,500 bucks to know the difference?

 


The day I fell in love with Joel Parkinson!

I finally get him and not in a homoerotic way!

It is a near spring day like any other in Los Angeles, California. Clouds speckle the warm enough sky. Cars drive down the streets going places. I check my phone. There is some fun news. The New York Times has a story on how Donald J. Trump cajoled his way into the Republican Party. He wanted to be accepted and so he spent a lot of money and was accepted. I post a picture on Instagram. Then I log on to the World Surf League and watch Kolohe Andino defeat Matt Banting and then I fall in love with an older brunette.

I remember when Joel Parkinson first came on to the professional surf scene. I am that old. He was a Coolie Kid, part of an exciting new Australian movement and even though I wasn’t Australian I liked what they represented though their spice soon wore off. I found the blonde one extremely boring. He called me a “fucking Jew.” I found the brunette very much more handsome but equally dull.

“How could people enjoy Joel Parkinson’s surfing?” I wondered to myself. And also out loud. “It’s smooth, whatever that means, but…what does that mean?” I didn’t really understand.

But today as I watch him surf ok on fairly fun Snapper and everything clicks into place. I totally get it. Every muscle of his body is perfectly aligned. Every sinew dropping, driving, spraying, reloading. His rail does not slide unless he wants it too. His arcs are clean. Consistent. He surfs absolutely beautifully.

Why didn’t I see this before? As a younger man I suppose my head was only turned by air and by power. As an older man my head is turned by grace.

Goddamn is Joel Parkinson graceful.


Speaking of Kerr, his IV preheat for “stomach flu?” Total violation of the WSL's anti-doping policy. I hate to shit on Kerrzy, but rules is rules. The WSL employs WADA guidelines, and they're pretty damn clear on the matter. “The use of IV infusions in place of or in addition to oral fluid intake, such as to relieve severe dehydration caused by gastrointestinal distress during travel, without hospitalization, is prohibited." Will the WSL enforce its own rules? | Photo: WSL

WSL Responds to Anti-Doping Violation!

Unscrupulous low-level media outlet speculates wildly!

It’s the story on everyone’s lips, Josh Kerr violates WADA guidelines. Small-wave legend, barrel slayer, big-wave victor, one of the proud few to spin a free surf career into World Tour success. A feat more difficult than transitioning from amateur porn to Hollywood stardom.

Unscrupulous low level media online outlets are speculating wildly, the mainstream men keeping lips tightly buttoned, lest they offend. And the fans wait with bated breathe, wondering, “What shall be?”

A tour without Kerr would be a mundane attack on our hearts and minds, a terrifying descent into sporting legitimacy that would lay waste to our proud tradition of free spirited blood stream alteration.

Unscrupulous low-level media online outlets are speculating wildly, the mainstream men keeping lips tightly buttoned, lest they offend. And the fans wait with bated breathe, wondering, “What shall be?”

Are we witnessing the end of a icon?

Will the WSL’s wrath fall with the fury of mighty Mjölnir?

Why the radio silence? Is it indicative of corruption, a behind the scenes campaign to temper the Brazilian storm with the power of intravenous infusions?

I reached out to Dave Prodan, WSL VP of Communications, to find out more. His response? Shocking revelations, sure to change the course of the world.

With regards to Josh Kerr’s treatment on the Gold Coast, a TUE was approved in accordance with the WSL Anti-Doping Policy and WADA International Standards. The certified medical staff on site were authorized to administer the treatment in those circumstances.


Kelly Slater loses to Stu Kennedy
And that was it. Slater dead last in the first contest of the Year. Later, like Nick Carroll suggested, I listened to Kelly's post loss presser, prepared to take it at face value. He said he felt loosey-goosey and that you can't base anything on a contest result. But his eyes looked so sad. He looked done. Like he'd based everything on a contest result. Long way back at 44 from last place at Snapper with Bells , Margies and Brazil ahead. | Photo: WSL/Brett Skinner

Day 2, QuikPro: “Slater looked so sad!”

And Julian Wilson looked drugged and uninterested…

What if he’s right?

Nostalgia is a bitch, even in the great game of surf journalism, but things used to be looser.

Truly.

We’d cover events on the ground, not the webcast. Stab mag used to send two journalists to an event. This was before the WSL tightened everything up and made you sign your life away to write anything about anyone. To enter the contest area now you have to accept that “damaging the WSL brand” could see you evicted by hired goons.

Who the fuck needs that noise? Not this peacenik.

But I needed to answer a question and the webby wouldn’t do. To preface, like you, I like to mix my pro surfing with politics, especially the American presidential variety.

Now, doesn’t it seem sometimes like the schizoid polarised American debate deals with completely separate realities, different Americas? And hasn’t the commentary on pro surfing become captive to the same forces?

Even here, on our beloved Grit, there’s an orthodoxy that pro surfing is doomed to fail, the WSL is a heartbeat away from total business oblivion. And yet Paul Speaker is all over every mainstream business publication spruiking pro surfing as the great sporting success story of our era, at the vanguard of the online age. A live streaming miracle.

I woke in my car down by the railroad tracks in South Tweed, off Broadway, cheap bookstores, porn shop, few grimy ice addicts looking for a morning coffee. Grim. Less than a mile from the blue water and the Superbank.

Yes, in the words of economist JK Galbraith: “Out of the pecuniary pressures and fashions of the time businesses cultivate their own version of the truth…..with no necessary relation to reality”.

But fuck, I thought, as I heard an update of the QuikPro on national radio, what if Speaker is right.

What if he’s right. 

I woke in my car down by the railroad tracks in South Tweed, off Broadway, cheap bookstores, porn shop, few grimy ice addicts looking for a morning coffee. Grim. Less than a mile from the blue water and the Superbank.

Walked through the contest site unmolested, no pros fronted me. Watched Filipe Toledo walk out to the rocks. Online and in the latest Hurley ad he looks like the kid last picked for indoor soccer but he’s put on twenty pounds of muscle, on the legs and buttocks. He looks like a Romanian gymnast intravenously fed a diet of calf blood and pure Testosterone.

Out on the rocks near the jump off next to a weird gaggle of photogs. Non surfers. A guy in English premier league soccer kit, a sixties acid rock throwback who looked like Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now and a stunning red head in a cat-woman bodysuit.

The acid throwback was an old pro by the name of Tommy Campion. We exchanged business cards, as gentlemen do.

“What do you think of the health of this pro surfing thing Tommy? Ascending or descending?” I asked.

“It’s one of the most exciting sports ever, it’s so interesting. The talent is thick. It’s only gunna get bigger and bigger”. That’s what he said. Not on anyone’s payroll.

What if he’s right?

Cat-woman said she found the passion and the talent intoxicating. She loved to be close to the action. We got moved on by the drone operators, much to Tommy’s disgust.

The crowd thickened for Kelly. Sweat flowed freely down every cleavage, into every orifice. The surf looked better than it did on the webby. Kelly’s board looked as bad as it did on the webby. Worse. It looked as drab and depressing as an English winter.

I watched the heat beachside with Stuey Kennedy’s manager. Black clouds piled up against the Queensland sun. Rain mixed with sweat, no-one moved. Stu lives in a modest brick and tile house, where he can often be found mowing the lawn. He was riding a Slater design, well, Dan Thomson-designed Firewire.

The crowd thickened for Kelly. Sweat flowed freely down every cleavage, into every orifice. The surf looked better than it did on the webby. Kelly’s board looked as bad as it did on the webby. Worse. It looked as drab and depressing as an English winter.

“He needs to drop the hammer”, said Stu’s manager.

Stuey dropped the hammer. The live impact dwarfed the webcast, the intent was visceral. Bosoms and buttocks jiggled in pleasure, grown men threw their fists in the air.

“If they don’t give that a fucking nine, I’m going to climb that tower and rip their fucking hearts out”, said the manager.  They gave him a nine-five.

And that was it. Slater dead last in the first contest of the Year.

Later, like Nick Carroll suggested, I listened to Kelly’s post-loss presser, prepared to take it at face value. He said he felt loosey-goosey and that you can’t base anything on a contest result. But his eyes looked so sad. He looked done. Like he’d based everything on a contest result. Long way back at 44 from last place at Snapper with Bells, Margies and Brazil ahead.

At least he got a return on investment by having Stuey on the Slater designs – didn’t they look great under his feet Chas! – as his victor.

In pissing rain, I drove back to Byron Bay to get a conversation with one of the most knowledgeable people on both pro surfing and Stuey Kennedy, Lennox kingpin James “Taipan” Woods.

It went like this:

Taipan: “It’s very surprising Kelly didn’t ride that same style of board, that Stuey rode. You could see how lively that board looked for Stuey. That board he rode looked bad. I guess he feels something in it, something we can’t see.

Longtom: Is it time for Kelly to shuffle off stage?

Taipan: I don’t think so. I’m sure if we get some swell he’ll fire….last year was so bad.

Longtom: If your performance is reliant on good waves….then you’re cooked, right?

Taipan: It’ll be interesting to see if he even goes to Bells.

Longtom: Early Easter, almost guaranteed to be shit surf at Bells. Let’s be honest, unless the surf is pumping Kelly is looking ordinary.

Taipan: I think that’s due to what he’s riding, I really do. He’s trying to prove some kind of point, but he hasn’t ridden any Tomo’s in any events. I think he needs to try that, what he’s riding now isn’t working.

Longtom: Why wouldn’t he be on the Tomo’s though, that’s his board label?

Taipan: I know it’s weird.

Longtom: In terms of pressure, how did you think Stuey responded, he got kinda lowballed on his first two waves?

Taipan: He responded well to that, but that’s the type of character he is though. He can rise in those moments, he did at Sunset.

Longtom: How would you describe his character?

Taipan: Stubborn. He’s got belief. He’s unique, for sure.

Longtom: How do you think he’ll go against the Brazilians, cause they’ll be ferocious in the water?

Taipan: He’s pretty confrontational. He’s had blow-ups heaps of times on the QS. He won’t back down at all. He’ll tell you what he’s thinking. He’s very upfront.

And the rest?

Julian: Looked drugged and uninterested.

Jordy: Oops, there goes another year.

JJF: JJF and Bede Durbidge? Is that the best duo since Torvill and Dean?

Ryan Callinan: Did I tell you this kid was the best rookie on tour?

Conner Coffin: I was wrong, he looks so much better in the flesh.

As to the question, is Speaker right? Is Pro surfing on the ascendancy?

Heart says no, head says yes. At least in Australia, the heartland of pro surfing. Shit is more mainstream than tennis. Now, about these “athletes” who come out of the off-season looking like condoms stuffed with walnuts.