I spoke yesterday with NIQ CEO Jim Peck after his consumer intelligence firm had debuted on the New York Stock Exchange. Formerly NielsenIQ, it was created four years ago when the private equity firm Advent International bought Nielsen’s Global Connect business in a leveraged buyout for $2.7 billion.
When it comes to leveraging AI, access to proprietary and high-quality data is obviously a plus, and NIQ has plenty of that.
Yesterday’s IPO raised $1.05 billion for NIQ. With $4.3 billion in total debt on an adjusted EBITDA of $741 million last year, Peck needs the money. “The real value is the capital,” he said. “It’s not a brand awareness thing. We’re buying down the debt and increasing the cash flow.”
After a transformation that included $400 million in AI upgrades, Peck says he’s optimistic about what’s next. “We’re a company that is perfectly suited to leverage AI in all its forms,” he argued. “We’re sitting on a goldmine of data. We cover 85% of the world’s population as far as shopping behavior and we do business with every relevant brand and retailer on the planet.”
“We can tell them how their market share is doing in Brooklyn, New York. We can say whether it’s because of a pricing promotion or something else, and we can tell them if more 60-year-old males are buying the product … We cover the earth’s shopping behavior.”
Fascinating stuff. Then again, the stock’s 9.5% drop on its first day of trading shows investors also brought the company down to earth, too.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
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From the analysts
Nomura Research Institute on Japan’s $550 billion investment: “Private Japanese companies ultimately decide investment in the U.S., and the USD 550 billion figure is merely a government target, not a binding promise. In reality, under the Trump administration, many Japanese companies likely view the business environment in the U.S. as deteriorating due to tariffs and other factors. Furthermore, at current exchange rates, labor costs in the U.S. are extremely high, providing little incentive for Japanese firms to expand investment there. If anything, we may see a stronger trend toward diversifying investments away from the U.S. From this perspective, the USD 550 billion figure lacks solid foundations and is no more than a verbal commitment,” per Takahide Kiuchi.
Macquarie on the Japan deal: “The US-Japan deal has some read-throughs to other prospective deals, insofar as it suggests that Trump is still willing to make deals. It didn’t seem that way two weeks ago, of course, when there was speculation that Trump was dejected by prolonged negotiations and a lack of concessions by the US’s trade partners, and was ready to ‘move on’ from ‘deals’ and focus on maximizing tariff revenue, instead. We suspect that the recent decline in Trump’s approval ratings at home (and, poignantly, with his ‘base’ because of the “Epstein Affair” …) prompted him to try to register some ‘wins’, and may have motivated him to get to ‘yes’ with Japan last night in the Oval Office,” per Thierry Wizman and Gareth Berry.
Oxford Economics on the Japan deal: “In exchange for lower tariffs, Japan will broaden market access for US producers in agricultural products and autos, but this is unlikely to have a significant impact in the short run. A key to reaching the deal appears to have been Japan’s commitment to invest $550bn in the US, though details on the program are unclear,” Norihiro Yamaguchi and Shigeto Nagai.
Around the watercooler
The billionaires and CEOs panicking about Zohran Mamdani are wrong about Gen Z by Kristin Stoller
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‘Intelligence too cheap to meter’ is AI’s next frontier, Sam Altman says by Nick Lichtenberg
CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.
