This Time Will Be No Different

Just when you thought this market couldn't get loopier, along comes one of our old friends to make us forget the bubble ever happened...

I'm talking, of course, about Tupperware Brands (TUP).

Back in April, I wrote a mini case study on how such an iconic brand could be so screwed up. As I said at the time...

Just because a brand is great, doesn't mean it's a good investment.

I have no idea why the stock is rising the way it is beyond short squeezes and whatever other games people play... with a stock, no less, that is barely hanging on to its New York Stock Exchange listing by its fingernails.

What I do know is that investors hoping Tupperware is the next Hertz (HTZ) – the original meme stock that was saved from the clutches of bankruptcy – had better fasten their seatbelts, because...?Hertz, Tupperware ain't.

That's pretty much?what I said last week on CNBC, when?Last Call?host Brian Sullivan suggested that Tupperware might be the second coming of Hertz...

Unlike Hertz, Tupperware wasn't getting smashed by the pandemic, causing an already-rocky situation to get worse...

To the contrary, as I laid out in my case study, Tupperware's stock was catapulted by the pandemic, as was its business... which until then was barely alive. Just take a look at a chart of its stock.

Before the pandemic escalated, TUP shares were hovering around $1.

As I've written previously, the reality was and remains that Tupperware's direct sales business model doesn't work the way it used to. It's?broken. Unlike its heyday, when Tupperware was?Tupperware, the company now competes in a crowded market, with products that are mostly sold at retail.

Tupperware itself is trying to shift to a hybrid model, which includes retail...

It's doing so?because its business model is broken.

But barring something coming out of left field to save Tupperware (other than a wing and a prayer), the facts are the facts... (To read the rest please click here.)