HAPPY SUNDAY TO THE STREET
The buzziest fitness tracker on the market just filed to go public, and the numbers are as sleek as the hardware.
Oura's filing shows $1.21 billion in revenue for the nine months through June, up 74%, and a swing to a $60.8 million profit.
Rings are still 80% of sales, but the subscription is the business: memberships carry an 89% gross margin, and 5 million paying members open the app more than 3.5 times a day.
Oura does warn that growth will slow. But when the stickiest part of the model also boasts the highest margins, that's a problem most IPOs would love to have.
Watch for OURA on the Nasdaq as soon as this month. If it’s anything like 2026’s other high-profile debuts, all that aura farming could reap quite the harvest.
— Brooks & The Street Sheet Team
FAST FASHION, SLOW GROWTH
What: Shein listed in Hong Kong this week at roughly $27B, a clearance-rack markdown from the nearly $100B that the fast-fashion giant once commanded. Revenue growth slipped precipitously from 41% to 21% to 8%, landing at just 1.1% last quarter. The stock is priced as if the damage is permanent. But it might not be.
Why: The de minimis loophole that let Shein ship duty-free parcels into the US closed last year, and Europe followed in July. Shein passed most of the cost to customers, and US sales fell 14% in the first quarter. Growth now costs more too: marketing eats nearly 16% of revenue, up from 11% three years ago.
What Else: There’s a case for patience. M Science's credit-card data show US spending on Shein fell when it dropped off Google's top-advertiser list in December, then recovered in the second quarter once the ad budget came back. Customers will pay higher prices if Shein pays to reach them. It also has nearly $15 billion in cash and just bought Everlane, a hint at deals to come in a fragmented industry.
Watch: Shein trades at about 13x last year's earnings, between Inditex (IDEXY) at 29x and PDD (PDD) at 9x. Cheap isn't a strategy, and Shein hasn't offered one beyond "attract new customers." We'll listen for one before the multiple moves.
THE HAWK HAS LANDED
What: Kevin Warsh spent his first months as Federal Reserve chair refusing to say what he thinks. But at Jackson Hole, he finally did, sort of: the Fed is ready to act on inflation, and 2% is a "firm, fixed" target. And if it talks like a hawk and squawks like a hawk…
Why: July PCE ran 3.7% year over year, and inflation has topped target for 65 months. Warsh also called the summer's better readings unconvincing. The Fed Chair may be opposed to giving forward guidance, but markets took those as some pretty strong signs. September hike odds jumped to 58% from 35%, and Apollo read the rise in two-year yields and the dollar as a credibility gain.
What Else: Warsh showed his work. He splits the PCE index into its 199 components and counts how many are rising faster than 3%: 58% over the past year, 49% over six months. That's a diffusion index, a gauge of how widespread price gains are, rather than how big.
Watch: The FOMC meets September 15-16, with August CPI and jobs data landing first. TwentyFour Asset Management thinks Warsh has boxed himself in: absent a sharp turn in the data, not hiking now costs more credibility than hiking does.
CASTING DOUBT
What: SpaceX (SPCX) will make gas-turbine blades and vanes in-house, which CEO Elon Musk says can bring turbines online up to 18 months sooner. Howmet Aerospace (HWM) fell steeply on the news. But the new arm Musk wants to add to his space race business might, in fact, be rocket science.
Why: Only a handful of companies make these parts, for good reason. Each blade is grown in a vacuum furnace as a single crystal of nickel superalloy, and one stray grain scraps it. SemiAnalysis says a new line can junk more than half its output for a long stretch, and analysts put the timeline to stand up a new factory at four years minimum.
What Else: DPC Holdings (DPC) is small and gets about 40% of revenue from gas turbines. Howmet holds roughly half the global market but draws only 11% of sales from turbines, with the rest in aerospace and defense. Morgan Stanley (MS) doesn't expect SpaceX to supply anyone but itself, and the foundry doubles as a parts shop for its Raptor rocket engines.
