SharkNinja: The Beckham Effect

"There is nothing new in Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market to-day has happened before and will happen again."

– Edwin Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, 1923

Influencer marketing.

Oh Jesus, Patrick, what on earth are we talking about now.

Jep, I know. Stay with me. Because if you want to understand how consumer businesses win in 2026, you have to understand the economics of attention. And the people who own it.

Fifty years ago, a brand bought thirty seconds between the evening news and the weather forecast, and the whole country watched. That world is gone. Attention has splintered into millions of feeds, and a new profession has grown in the cracks.

The creator. And the creator economy.

Some have a hundred million followers. Others have fifty thousand. But fifty thousand who trust them like a friend, in one very specific niche. Yoga mums. Home baristas. Sneaker collectors. When that person says «this works», it converts better than any TV spot ever did.

Some companies understood this early. Gymshark, founded in 2012 by a British teenager sewing gym wear in his parents’ garage, built a billion-pound brand almost entirely on fitness creators. No stores, no TV. Just people you already followed, wearing the product. The pioneers proved the model: don’t rent attention. Partner with the people who own it.

And then there is a company that took this playbook and industrialised it. A spin-off from 2023 (you remember the curious magic of the spin-off from our Honeywell Aerospace Weekly) that calls its strategy «Social First», works with everyone from global icons like David Beckham (Chart 1) to micro-creators with laser-targeted audiences.

And it treats storytelling as seriously as engineering.

Enter SharkNinja.

Chart 1: David Beckham and the Ninja Creami: «Social First» marketing in action

SharkNinja: The House That Never Stops Selling

Shark... Ninja?

Yeah, I know, cool name, isn’t it? But what do they actually sell?

Everything.

Well, everything in your home.

Shark is the cleaning and beauty brand: vacuums, mops, hair stylers, air purifiers. Ninja is the kitchen: air fryers, blenders, grills, coffee machines. Together: 38 sub-categories, 38 markets, more than 5,500 patents protecting the portfolio, and a product engine with a declared goal of 25 new launches per year. Third-party suppliers across Southeast Asia manufacture 100% of the products. SharkNinja itself does the two things it is truly great at: engineering and storytelling.

Yes, you read that right. It outsourced practically all its manufacturing and only designs and engineers products in-house with around 1,000 engineers, but owns zero factories.

And every once in a while, this machine hits a nerve (Chart 2).

A red-light therapy face mask that turned skincare routines into a viral phenomenon (No. 3). Driven overwhelmingly by female consumers who found salon treatments suddenly available on their bathroom shelf. An ice cream maker, the Ninja Creami, that conquered wedding apéros and, hold on, makes Frozen Aperol Spritz (No. 2). OH YES. COUNT ME IN. And now, ladies and gentlemen, a microwave that first heats your food and then air-fries it crispy. Yes. This now exists (No. 1).

None of these products existed in your imagination five years ago.

That’s the point.

SharkNinja doesn’t wait for demand. It studies consumer frustrations, engineers a solution, and then hands it to a thousand creators who make you feel like you need it. The moat isn’t one product. It’s the repeatable loop of insight, patent, launch, virality.

With this,SharkNinja holds more patents than it has employees: over 5,500 patents versus roughly 4,000 people.

A wonderful machine. But how big can it actually get?

Chart 2: Expanding within and around the home: (1) the microwave that air-fries, (2) frozen cocktails from the Creami, (3) red-light therapy masks

SharkNinja’s World Is Still Mostly Empty

From $250 million in 2008 to $6.4 billion in 2025. A 21% compound growth rate, seventeen years long (Chart 3). And here is the remarkable part: management just raised guidance again, now expecting 11.5% to 12.5% sales growth for 2026.

The reason is simple.

The house is big, and SharkNinja has only furnished a few rooms.

The company is dominant in the US and the UK. Continental Europe, however, is still young territory. Germany and France since 2020, Italy and Spain since 2021.

Switzerland?

Most people here have never heard the name. International sales outside North America reached $2.1 billion in 2025, growing at a 31% compound rate since 2020. The playbook is proven: «With the success of our direct model in the United Kingdom, we have been able to consistently leverage this model to successfully enter and meaningfully grow in new markets.»

Their words. The numbers back them up.

And here the two threads of our story braid together. Beckham’s face may front the campaigns in the US and UK, but his followership is global. So is the creator economy. A viral air-fryer recipe doesn’t stop at borders. Those delicious air-fried potatoes travel faster than any container ship. Every new market entry starts with attention that, in a sense, has already been bought.

The economics are attractive too: capital-light manufacturing, strong free cashflow, low leverage, and returns on invested capital of around 20%. Every franc reinvested into new categories and new countries earns its keep several times over.

Of course, risks exist.

Viral products can be fads. Yesterday’s Creami is tomorrow’s dusty appliance in the cellar. The company sells discretionary goods to consumers who tighten belts in recessions. Tariffs and supply chains remain a moving target, even with production spread across six countries. And a marketing machine this dependent on cultural relevance must stay relevant. Forever.

A wonderful business, a «Good Story», then, with real risks. As always. But you know our rule: a wonderful business is not automatically a wonderful investment.

So, what does Mr. Market say?

Let’s check the «Good Chart».

Spoiler: It’s powerful.

Chart 3: Net sales from $250 million (2008) to $6.4 billion (2025): «We are just getting started»

The Tape Never Lies (Because Human Nature Never Changes)

Almost 100 years ago, Jesse Livermore, the most famous speculator who ever lived, published a hand-drawn chart in his notebook of how a stock behaves through its lifecycle. An «Accumulation Cylinder with Widening Mouth»: higher highs, higher lows, the channel gradually broadening as more buyers discover the story. Wave after wave, each pullback finding support above the last, until the trend accelerates.

He drew that a hundred years ago. With a pen. And if you place it next to SharkNinja’s weekly chart since the 2023 spin-off, the resemblance is almost eerie (Chart 4). The same stair-step advance. The same widening channel. The same rhythm of enthusiasm, doubt, and renewed conviction. Point after point, the stock has climbed the cylinder. And recently, it broke out above the upper boundary.

How can a sketch from the early 1900s describe a stock chart from 2026?

Because charts don’t measure companies. They measure people. Fear, greed, FOMO, regret. The same forces that make you buy an ice cream maker because someone you trust showed you a Frozen Aperol Spritz (Yes, I know, you are thinking about buying the Ninja Creami all the time 😉). Nothing new on Wall Street. Nothing new in your kitchen. Human nature is the one constant. And SharkNinja has built its entire business model on exactly that insight.

Which brings us to the honest conclusion.

SharkNinja has all the ingredients: a proven growth engine, a widening Moat, an under-penetrated Europe, and a marketing machine perfectly tuned to how humans actually behave. The business is executing almost flawlessly. The only real problem we can identify is not the company at all. It is the possibility that the stock, like so many great stories before it, runs too far ahead of itself. If you followed our Semiconductor Climax Run, you know what the end of such a cylinder can look like. SharkNinja is not there. But Livermore’s chart, remember, has a right-hand side too.

So keep both eyes open. And if you happen to see David Beckham in a Christmas sweater this winter, scooping ice cream into a sundae glass: you now know exactly why he is smiling.

He understands human nature, the one thing that never changes.

So does the company paying him.

Chart 4: SharkNinja’s weekly chart since the 2023 spin-off next to Jesse Livermore’s hand-drawn «Speculative Chart» from 100 years ago