Triumphs and Tumbles of 2024

Table of Contents

Nvidia

Adidas

Jaguar

Boeing

Intel

BYD

CrowdStrike

2024’s Financial Titans

Nvidia: The Semiconductor Powerhouse

The dominator of the semiconductor industry, Nvidia has cemented itself as the most profitable company of 2024. Its market cap has skyrocketed by over $2 trillion in one year reaching a staggering $3.28 trillion by the end of 2024 placing itself right behind Apple as the second biggest tech giant in the world. The obvious reason for these incredible numbers is the increasing importance of AI in our world and that is where Nvidia hit the ball right out of the park. Nvidia built chips that were so good at handling complex data operations and calculations that it became the immediate go to choice for big tech companies building massive data centers in 2024. The heart of Nvidia lies in their production of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). It offers a wide range of GPUs to gamers and data scientists. These may include consumer-grade graphics cards for gaming and content creation to high-performance computing (HPC) solutions for data centers and AI research. Their latest GPU architectures (such as Ampere and Hopper) are incredibly powerful for handling AI tasks. These advancements make the company’s GPU technology essential for gamers as well as for those working in deep learning and machine learning. The reason why these GPUs are becoming more famous by the day is because they have thousands of cores, which allows them to crunch massive amounts of data for AI to perform its tasks much faster.

Adidas: The Marathoner of Market Growth

Adidas had a phenomenal 2024, recording significant growth in both stock performance and market expansion. The company’s stock price surged by over 35% during the year, outperforming major competitors and broader market indices. Adidas' strategic focus on product innovation and effective marketing has truly given their investors a good amount of confidence. Coming to the more statistical side of things, in mid April, Adidas impressed investors with a robust earnings report, propelling its shares from approximately €202 to €226. More recently, in mid-July, Adidas provided optimistic guidance, forecasting a significant increase in operating profits from €700 million to €1 billion. Adidas’ sheer ability to consistently deliver strong performances and exceed market expectations has made it the hot performer in the athletic apparel and footwear industry in 2024. The Adidas collaborations in 2024 have simply been a standout which have further strengthened their reputation in the eyes of investors. Collaborations with high profile figures such as one of the all time greats Lionel Messi and a deal with superstar Patrick Mahomes alongside the Texas Tech University which makes Adidas the official footwear, uniform, apparel and accessory partner of the Texas Tech Raiders athletic teams. To conclude, Adidas continues to demonstrate strong growth potential and is a great investment for the 2025 financial year.

2024’s Downfall Stories: Reputational and Market Failures

Jaguar: A Failed Rebranding Attempt

Jaguar’s rebranding campaign in November didn’t exactly go their way and the immediate reactions to it were overwhelmingly negative. The iconic British luxury car manufacturer, a symbol of elegance and high-performance engineering, now finds itself the target of ridicule rather than admiration. Jaguar’s reputation of luxury and elegance was completely contrasted with their promotional video that showcased brightly coloured outfits with an aim to reposition Jaguar as a brand that is ready to join the more futuristic side of things - which is launching its own electric model. This new transition into the electric car market was definitely a golden opportunity especially to how the world is evolving into the more sustainable side of things, however, there was a lack of connect between its previous reputation and if it had designed it in a way that was more committed to sustainable luxury then it would have resonated its consumers far more effectively. Furthermore, Jaguar’s “Copy Nothing” campaign feels like a rejection of its history rather than an evolution of it. While bold moves can pay off, they need to be grounded in a coherent strategy that builds on the brand’s existing strengths.

Boeing Through A year of turbulence

2024 was a great year for the S&P 500 surging stocks up 23% to the sky. The same however could not be said for The Boeing Company (or its planes) who would want to forget this year.

To put it mildly, Boeing’s 2024 was a nightmarish concoction of technical blunders, workforce chaos and PR terrors. The year kicked off with a head-scratcher: an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9 blew out an emergency exit mid-flight due to missing bolts—yes, missing bolts. A part of the fuselage wasn’t properly secured, leading to uncontrolled decompression. It was a stark reminder of the company's ongoing manufacturing quality lapses, something you’d expect from a startup, not an aerospace giant. In December Boeing’s ill fortunes didn't catch a break either with a Jeju Air 737-800 crashed in South Korea at Muan International Airport, killing 179 people. 

If safety concerns weren’t enough, the company found itself knee-deep in labor disputes. Over 33,000 machinists decided they’d had enough, walking off the job in September. This wasn’t just a picket line for show; it ground the production of Boeing’s bread-and-butter jets—the 737, 777, and even military variants of the 767—to a screeching halt. 

After seven anxious weeks, Boeing ultimately threw enough money at the problem, awarding employees a deal with a 38% wage increase over four years. Sure, the wheels started rolling again, but not before demonstrating how distant leadership had gotten from the production floor.

And let's speak about the 777X, Boeing's rumored next-generation flagship. Another delay pushed first deliveries back a year, causing dissatisfaction among airlines already dealing with capacity challenges.Add to that the $8 billion in losses racked up by September and a plan to axe 17,000 jobs—10% of the workforce—and you’ve got a company looking like it’s flying on fumes.

What’s the plan to pull out of this nosedive? Well, to put it simply- Former CEO Phil Condit believes Boeing should go back to fundamentals and develop something fresh. It's been more than 20 years since their 787 Dreamliner astonished the world, and Airbus isn't sitting still; its A321XLR and other innovations are reducing Boeing's market share. Condit's pitch is straightforward: create a new jet, motivate your employees, and offer airlines a reason to stop looking elsewhere. Boeing in 2024 demonstrated what happens when short-term cost-cutting trumps long-term vision. The major issue now is whether they can create a turnaround.

All in all, 2024 put Boeing on the brink of bankruptcy and sent stocks down to a peak of 41%, ending the year down 26% thanks to a fruitful agreement reached with the workers to end the strike.

Intel: The Struggling Chipmaker

The Intel stock nosedived almost 60% since the beginning of 2024 - a period that also saw the company’s worst single-day decline of 26% at the beginning of this month which was in sharp contrast to its fellow semiconductor companies such as Nvidia, Micron Technology and Applied Materials. Intel is in a similar position to that of Boeing because like Boeing, Intel too was one of the worst performing S&P 500 stocks of the year. Intel is continuously losing much of its market share because much of the business remains tied up with legacy PC products and thus is struggling to compete with leading AI chip designers leading to it not being able to capitalise on growth opportunities in the AI driven market. Adding on to all of this, in August 2024, Intel reported a $1.6 billion loss for the second quarter of 2024 and announced plans to cut 15,000 jobs as part of a cost-saving initiative aimed at reducing expenses by $10 billion in 2025. These restructuring efforts, including suspending dividend payments, signaled significant challenges within the company. Furthermore, the entire pressure that Intel is receiving from its rivals like Nvidia has shown nothing but negative outcomes for the company. In November 2024, Intel was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average and was replaced by Nvidia. This delisting underscored Intel's declining prominence and grip in the tech industry and negatively impacted investments as the Dow Jones Industrial Average is considered to be one of the more recognised stock market indices. Being replaced by Nvidia made investors lose hope in the company and diminished Intel’s status as it showcased itself to be incompetent and unable to compete with the elite in its own industry. Finally, the departure of Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger added fuel to the fire because at that point of time Intel was already facing competitive pressure and declining market share and losing the CEO during these times created uncertainty about the company’s direction and priorities.

2024’s Game-Changer: The Unexpected Victors

Build Your Dreams: The New EV King

BYD sold 4,272,145 vehicles last year, up 41.3 percent from 2023's 3,024,417 units, the company said. The company's quarterly revenue surpassed global rival Tesla's for the first time during the third quarter last year. It was quite ironic that in 2011 Elon Musk laughed on the Chinese EV brand during a Bloomberg interview and instead BYD completely outcompeted Tesla in the fourth quarter of the 2024 financial year as the top EV maker, selling more battery-powered vehicles than its U.S. rival. Critical to BYD’s success has been mainly due to vertical integration. Instead of relying on other companies for parts, BYD managed to crack the code of producing EVs cheaply by making most of its own components. The company is able to not only offer a wide range of affordable EVs at low prices, it is also expanding its footprint into new markets. After the development of its own Blade Battery, things have certainly changed for BYD. The Blade Battery offers new levels of safety, durability and performance, as well as increased battery space utilisation. Another unique selling point of the blade battery is that it uses lithium iron-phosphate (LFP) as the cathode material, which offers a much higher level of safety than conventional lithium-ion batteries. LFP naturally has excellent thermal stability and is substantially cobalt free and is also extremely durable. Alongside all of these changes from BYD, the Chinese government has been extremely supportive towards the growth of electric vehicles in their country. They provided $3.7 billion in forms of direct subsidies which BYD took great advantage through which they expanded their reach worldwide backed up by the statistic that BYD employed approximately 420,000 vehicles outside of China, an increase of 72% compared to 2023. To conclude, it is the way BYD has actually adapted to these market demands and favourable policies that has been the key factor to its rise in 2024.

CrowdStrike’s Oops Moment

The 19th of July 2024 recorded the largest ever IT outage in history. Millions of devices shut down worldwide, thousands of businesses came to a screeching halt, and the global economy collectively watched billions of dollars vanish into thin air. It wasn’t just another glitch — this was the glitch.

The internet dubbed the occurrence the "Digital Doomsday" (because, of course, it was), and it revolved on a pervasive vulnerability in software installed across innumerable networks. What lies at the core of this digital carnage? CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity colossus trusted by Fortune 500 corporations, governments, and everyday computer enthusiasts.

So what went wrong? CrowdStrike has released a normal update for its endpoint protection product. But, as fate would have it, this "routine" update included an unanticipated problem. Instead than protecting computers against viruses, it accidentally locked devices out of their operating systems. Imagine a domino effect, but on a global scale. Servers have crashed. ATMs are out of service. Smart refrigerators? Let's just say they weren't being very smart.

For firms, the timing could not have been worse. Friday is peak working hours, and financial transactions are pouring in. Tech professionals throughout the world hurried to disconnect computers, roll back upgrades, and save what they could. Memes proliferated on social media (naturally), with some joking about mankind finally getting a vacation from screens and others comparing it to Y2K, but with a nastier taste.
To their credit, CrowdStrike worked around the clock to deploy a fix, apologize, and promise a thorough investigation. By the end of the week, most systems were operational, albeit with a rather frantic team behind them.

But here's the thing: in an increasingly interconnected world, this occurrence was a wake-up call. It demonstrated how reliant we've gotten on digital infrastructure and how a single weakness can spread throughout sectors like wildfire.
What's with the irony? On a day designed to highlight modern cybersecurity, the globe realized that no one is truly immune. Not even the very finest.

Written by Raj Shah

9th January 2025