Impact of Investment Choices On Your Company Bottom Lines

I saw a really good article here from the Washington Stand, that’s FRC’s news outlet titled Target Retreats from LGBT merch. After a year long profit bloodbath, Target has been taken a hit, Shanna, because of what they did. And I think this is a great thing.I think you’d agree with me. Our listeners would as well. Obviously, what we’re seeing is Bri is not just a pipe dream like the Fed’s 2% interest rate goal.
It actually works.

It’s not a marketing ploy. And so my first question for you is, what does this headline tell us about the effectiveness of investing with our values and specifically with the values of the biblical worldview? Yeah.
So let’s take a step back and remember what happened. We talked about this at length last year, last summer, in the midst of pride Month, which target started early. They started in May. And, you know, target is really, right now, being forced to do, over the last years an about face when their bottom line is hit. So let’s. Let’s get a little refresher of what happened.

Target started in May of last year. They started putting these grotesque displays of perversion front and center in all of their stores right there. Right in your face as you walk in full of tuck friendly swimsuits, binders, baby clothing.

And there were some items from a line of clothes designed by Satan himself. Well, maybe not by Satan, but at least by one of his disciples, who claims to be a member of the Church of Satan but really doesn’t believe that Satan exists. That’s right.

Which is. I feel like it’s exactly what Satan wants. Right.
It is crazy. It is. Anyway, so one of the.. and this was kind of from the CEO of Target’s remarks, one of the. They only sold three items from his line, this self proclaimed satanist. One of them was a sweatshirt featuring an image of a serpent wrapped around a winged staff, a typical symbol of the medical community, along with a slogan that says, cure transphobia, not trans people.
Another was a messenger bag with a UFO image in the phrase too queer for here. And the third was a tote bag with images of planets in the line, we belong everywhere. Shanna,
I have a theory that aliens are just demons. But anyway, that’s. I agree with you.
Yeah. Another show topic, perhaps. Yeah.
And, you know, these items were the least extreme of this particular designer’s work. He also has shirts that weren’t sold at Target but that say, Satan respects pronouns and other really horrific things like that depict decapitating people who don’t agree with the lgbt agenda and things like that. Well, Target once bragged that their transgender line of merchandise was, quote, great for their brand.

And the CEO, Brian Cornell, who, you know, Dan, had a long history of criticizing, and I agree with him, but he once flaunted that the stores chest binders and tucking swimsuits for kids were considered progress, quote, unquote, progress. Well, Target executives have been forced to admit in their earnings calls in the last year that the Target boycott contributed to lower overall sales. Target’s chief growth officer told analysts in August, quote, the reaction is a signal for us to pause, adapt, and learn so that our future approach to these moments balances celebration, inclusivity, and broad based appeal.

So let’s take a look at what happened to target’s stock price in the last two years. I think we’ve got a graphic to throw up there on the screen. So this chart goes back two years.
We see that in May of 2022, the stock price dropped from the high at the time of dollar 215 a share to around $142. By February of 2023, the stock recovers to 180, then takes another dip, while Target now sits at around $160 a share, just about where it was before the extreme rainbow radicals started their early celebration of pride month last year. So it’s taken a whole year for target stock to recover from what it did last year.

So it’s, I don’t know, maybe a little surprising that they actually picked up on that and they’re going to do something about it. But, you know, target, it would really be wise to disengage from the culture war and just sell stuff. Do a good job at selling stuff.
Yeah, you’re exactly right. And it’s not a huge ask. I mean, is it so much to ask for companies to do what they’re supposed to do? You know, it’s like asking the sun to rise in the morning.
Companies are supposed to sell stuff. You know, Shanna, it would be ideal if companies started openly upholding the biblical values in their investing. That’d be great.

That’s probably not going to happen, so we’ll settle for them just focusing on the bottom line, making good products, keeping virtue, signaling out of it, et cetera. What are your thoughts on this? Well, you know, this is not repentance on Target’s part. I think that they still are very outspoken that they support the LGBTQ agenda.

They’re just not going to put it in people’s faces, which I’m appreciative of, that I don’t shop at Target anyway. But I haven’t in a long time, since AFR had their boycott years ago over the same sex bathrooms. And it’s just, you know, I just.
I don’t want to see it. It infuriates me, and, you know, I don’t want my kids thinking that. That this is normal.
You know, we have to. We have to teach our children what the Bible says about gender, about sexuality, about morality, because it will not go good for them if they buy into this lie. So, you know, it’s just not good business practice for a target.
Even if they’re calling this a marketing strategy. Depending on what study you look at, four to 8% of the population is LGBTQ. So do we want to really gear our whole marketing strategy if we’re a retailer to four, four to 8% of the population, especially when that probably means alienating the biggest part of your consumer base? Yeah, not good business.

Not a great move at all. Not a great move at all. Now, you mentioned the 4.8%,
Shanna. That’s a small number. But as we’ve seen in the last couple of years, that small group of people has a really loud voice and a lot of clout over the us government, over the media, over the medical field, all this stuff.

What kind of backlash can we expect to see from this other side that is, truthfully very small but has a really loud, sometimes annoying voice? Yeah. You know, this is a spiritual battle. It’s not a physical battle.
And so we can expect those voices to get louder and louder, and it’s already happening. The president of the human rights campaign said that Cornell, that’s the CEO of target, that their move was a disappointing betrayal of their progressive values. They said, quote, pride merchandise means something.

LGBTQ people are in every zip code in this country, and we aren’t going anywhere. So we can expect to see that backlash. Yeah, for sure.

Now, maybe from the other side. , is this just the beginning? Do you think. Do you think other companies will learn from target, Bud light, as well? Speaking of backlash, we obviously saw Dylan Mulvaney come out and basically come after Bud light after they kind of turned course.

Also, could we see some other companies perhaps realizing this isn’t such a good idea? Maybe we need to change course and just, I don’t know, focus on making good widgets if we’re a widget factory. Yeah. Well, if they have any business smarts, they will.
And that’s, you know, that’s one of the reasons that we, you know, we screen out these companies because we don’t want to deploy our money into the kingdom of darkness. We don’t want to fund darkness. But, you know, it’s also a losing business proposition if you’re looking at it.

You know, first we look at it from a spiritual perspective, but if you’re looking at it from a secular perspective, it doesn’t make good business sense either. You know, the bottom lines of companies will be relieved a little when they scrap the costly DEI and ESG programs. I saw some research by Forbes that said that companies in the US spend around $8 billion a year on their DEI efforts.
And that’s because of these very, very squeaky and annoying wheels that come after these corporations and really threaten them into pronouncing support for these movements. You know, , some people might say, you know what? I’m not going to worry about this. I’m just one person.

You know, we’re not going to win this fight anyway. How would you encourage Bri investors to think differently about this? You’re only one person, but your voice matters. What would you say? Well, I mean, that for those that think that their voices don’t matter, I would ask the question, matter to who? Yeah, you know, we should be.

We should be performing for an audience of one, and that is for the lord. So maybe it won’t make a hill of beans to target if you don’t shop there, but it will matter to the lord on the day that you stand before him and answer stewardship questions about where you deployed his resources that you or trusted to manage. So you might be able to say that you didn’t bury your capital and that you invested in companies because they offered great rates of return, and then you turn around and gave that money.
But is it going to be. Will you be okay in saying that you deployed that capital into a company that boldly and proudly advocated for lifestyles contrary to God’s direction for gender and sexuality. So I would say that you.
That you want to be on the right side of that because there’s reward that comes with it. Amen.