⚡ EV Infrastructure, Passenger Records And The Cost Of Getting Educated

Good morning. Applegreen is putting €15m behind Ireland’s EV shift, Ryanair and Cork Airport are breaking passenger records, and stronger venture funding comes with a sizeable concentration caveat. Worth Your Time examines the productivity gap holding back Ireland’s domestic economy. Let’s get into it.

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1. Applegreen Backs Ireland’s EV Shift With €15m Hub. Applegreen is investing €15m in a new electric-vehicle charging hub in Naas, with 150 jobs planned across the site. It follows July’s record EV registrations, although DoneDeal cautioned that it will still take years for electric vehicles to outnumber combustion-engine cars on Irish roads. New sales are shifting quickly but replacing the country’s existing fleet and building enough charging capacity will take much longer.

2. Ryanair And Cork Airport Break Passenger Records. Ryanair carried more passengers in July than in any previous month, while Cork Airport reached two million passengers earlier in the year than ever before. The airline’s volumes remain strong despite weaker fares and higher fuel costs, while Cork’s growth supports its continuing capital programme. Travel demand is holding up; the pressure is moving onto aircraft, terminals and regional connectivity.

3. Irish VC Funding Rises, But Three Deals Dominate. Irish companies raised €296m across 20 venture-capital deals during the second quarter, more than 150% above the same period last year. Three transactions accounted for 63% of the total, led by Fonoa, CameraMatics and Manna. Ireland can still attract large international cheques, but the headline recovery is considerably narrower once the biggest rounds are removed.

4. Education Costs Are Becoming A Borrowing Decision. New research suggests parents are turning to loans to meet back-to-school expenses, while the average annual cost of attending college has risen to €16,158 for a student eligible for free tuition. That is €479 more than last year, with accommodation, groceries, utilities and the €2,500 student contribution all adding pressure. Education may be publicly supported, but families are increasingly financing the practical cost of accessing it themselves.

5. Services Grow As Shops Hold Their Ground. AIB’s services PMI rose to 55.2 in July, its strongest reading since November, as overseas demand increased and employment grew at its fastest pace since April 2023. Separate retail data showed online sales continuing to grow, but physical stores still taking the larger share of consumer spending. Ireland’s service economy is expanding, while shoppers are adding digital channels rather than abandoning the high street.

Flutter shares fell more than 10% after the Paddy Power owner cut its full-year revenue and earnings guidance, while chief executive Peter Jackson announced he will hand over to Dan Taylor at the end of September with shares currently back at a level similar to when Jackson took over in 2018, not good. Oil remained below $80 as markets weighed reports of a possible 60-day shipping agreement through the Strait of Hormuz, although no final deal had been confirmed. US private employers added 44,000 jobs in July, below the 65,000 expected. Disney beat quarterly profit forecasts and agreed to let TikTok creators use selected film and television clips, with some short-form videos also appearing on Disney+. General Motors renewed its Chinese joint venture with SAIC for another 20 years, keeping China central to its export strategy.

Health & Pharma

Health & Pharma this week sits under the shadow of consolidation, as two of the industry's biggest deals move through different stages while Ireland's smaller domestic health-services sector quietly builds its own scale.

The dominant tension is dealmaking momentum meeting real financing discipline. AstraZeneca shares fell almost 9 per cent on reports that it is in early talks to buy US rival Bristol Myers Squibb in a tie-up that could be worth around 350 billion euro and create the world's fourth-largest drugmaker. Nothing has been agreed and it remains unclear whether talks continue. The Irish landing runs through BMS's Cruiserath campus in Dublin 15, a 125-acre biologics site employing more than 1,000 people that ranks among the company's largest manufacturing footprints outside the United States.

Separately, AbbVie priced a 10-billion-dollar investment-grade bond sale to help fund its agreed 10.9-billion-dollar acquisition of Apogee Therapeutics, with the offering attracting roughly 63 billion dollars in investor demand, a sign that big pharma debt still finds a ready market even as appetite for other borrowers cools.

Closer to home, Dublin occupational healthcare group Medmark, formed into an all-island operation earlier this year through its Blackwell Associates acquisition, is reported to be nearing a fresh round of investment, though terms remain unconfirmed.

The forward watch is whether the AstraZeneca-Bristol Myers talks progress into a formal approach.

In Friday’s Tá, the Sector Spotlight will be Property & Energy.

Thursday - The Deal Desk…

PTSB: Shareholders approved BAWAG’s proposed €1.6bn takeover on 30 July. Regulatory clearance and remaining conditions are still required.

Increase Bank: Stripe’s first employee, Darragh Buckley, completed his takeover of Twin City Bank and renamed it Increase Bank, bringing it closer to his banking-infrastructure company Increase.

Free Now: Lyft-owned Free Now acquired Irish taxi technology companies Lynk and Swift, adding local booking systems and fleet relationships.

Actavo Events: Denis O’Brien’s Actavo sold certain staging, seating and barrier assets to Castle Stage Hire for an undisclosed sum as it exits events infrastructure to focus on engineering.

Disney And TikTok: The companies agreed to let selected creators use Disney characters and scenes, with curated short-form videos also appearing on Disney+.

A 1,000-year-old Irish oak has been turned into whiskey casks and former rugby international Conor Murray has joined insurance firm Gallagher not long after starting a new podcast. Very honourable second careers no matter the age. Manchester United, meanwhile, found a reported £20m a year in its new Betway training-kit deal, the biggest ever deal for training kits. And for those looking for a quieter post-bank-holiday weekend, the Business Post recommends Have You Never Heard of Bill Fuller?, Our Hero, Balthazar and The Shards.

The Read – The Irish Times – Poor productivity in Ireland's domestic business threatens to hold economy back

Siptu economist Michael Taft's research, presented at a Nevin Economic Research Institute conference, finds the productivity gap between Ireland's domestic firms and comparable small European economies has widened to almost 20 per cent since 2019, worst in construction, financial services and transport. Closing it could be worth an estimated 25 billion euro. The notable part is the consensus, with unions, Ibec, Isme and Dublin Chamber broadly agreeing on causes from training funds to scale and R&D access, even where solutions still diverge. Link: Poor productivity in Ireland's domestic business threatens to hold economy back

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