Mexican-themed chain Guzman y Gomez plans to open at least 15 restaurants in the US despite doubling its losses on its “relentless” bid to expand into the competitive American market.
Despite its struggles in the US, the company recorded more than $1bn in sales across its network for the first time and more than doubled its net profit to $14.5m in the 12 months to July – its first year on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).
Australian investors were rattled even though Guzman y Gomez lifted its overall revenue by 23% to $1.181bn, with the company’s share price plummeting by nearly 20% by close of trade on Friday after it published its yearly financial results.
The company’s co-chief executive officers, Steven Marks and Hilton Brett, told investors their ambition was to “become the best and biggest restaurant company in the world”.
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Marks and Brett said they were committed to their North American expansion and were “relentlessly focused on demonstrating proof of concept” in the US.
The duo said each American restaurant would need to make at least US$3m a year in order to be sustainable and “while it will take time, we are seeing momentum”.
Guzman y Gomez lost A$13.2m on its US stores in the 12 months to 30 June, up from a $6.5m loss in the 2023-2024 financial year.
There have been considerable doubts over whether the Sydney-headquartered company can crack the US market, which is notoriously difficult for Australian food retailers due to different tastes, supply chains and portion sizes.
During the year, Guzman y Gomez added two urban strip restaurants to its network in Chicago, taking the total number of restaurants in the Illinois capital – where the company is beginning its foray into the American market – to seven.
The company’s strategy focuses on building density in the Chicago market by “expanding inwards from the suburbs” in a bid to “to deepen penetration and strengthen brand presence”.
In February, Marks conceded to investors the company’s US sales weren’t “growing as fast as we’d like”.
Nevertheless, Guzman y Gomez plans to open two new US stores in the 2025-26 financial year and expects its losses in the American market to increase slightly during the 12-month period.
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Guzman y Gomez co-CEO and co-founder Steven Marks rings the ASX bell as co-CEO Hilton Brett (left) said they remained confident the chain could reach 1,000 stores. Photograph: Supplied Morrow Sodali Pr/PR IMAGE
Marks and Brett told investors they were optimistic given it took them 12 years for their Australian restaurants to average $40k per week in sales and another seven years to reach $100k.
The company fared much better at home over the past year, reporting network sales of nearly $1.1bn in Australia, partially driven by an increase in night-time and breakfast trading with the increased rollout of 24/7 stores.
When it debuted on the ASX in June last year, the company won over investors by announcing plans to increase the number of its Australian stores from fewer than 200 to more than 1,000 – a figure chosen to rival McDonald’s – and build its international network.
Marks and Brett said Guzman y Gomez was “on track” to open 40 new restaurants in Australia a year within four years and remained confident they could reach 1,000 stores.
The company had 256 restaurants around the world as of 30 June after opening 39 new restaurants in the 12 months prior, including 32 in Australia, four in Singapore, one in Japan and the two new US stores.
2025 US Open – how to watch Eala live at Flushing Meadows
Fans in the Philippines and across Asia can follow the 2025 French Open on Eclat SPOTV.
The US Open will be broadcast on ESPN in the USA and across South America, New Zealand and the Caribbean. Eurosport hold the rights for much of Europe including France, while Sky Sports is the place to watch in the UK, Italy and Germany.
Star Sports will show the Grand Slam action in India, with coverage in Africa split between beIN Sports and SuperSport. Fans in Australia can tune in on Nine and Stan Sport, while RDS and TSN show the tournament in Canada.
Honor’s Magic8 series has been the subject of numerous leaks, and now we get a hint about its possible launch timeline.
Tipster Fixed Focus Digital on Weibo claims that Honor’s flagship Magic8 series will be unveiled in mid-October, marking an earlier launch than the Magic7 lineup, which was announced in late October and went on sale early November 2024.
Honor Magic7 Pro
As per previous rumors, the Magic8 series could include up to four models, including the standard Magic8, Magic8 Pro, Magic8 Mini, and a Magic8 Ultra. Rumors suggest that the Mini and Ultra variants could be announced in early 2026.
The Honor Magic8 series phones are rumored to be available in four color options. All phones in the lineup could come with wireless charging, periscope camera, and ultrasonic in-display scanners. Honor is also said to offer large capacity batteries on the upcoming phones.
Honor Magic7 Pro
Meanwhile, the Honor Magic8 Mini is expected to feature a MediaTek Dimensity 9500 SoC and a 6.3-inch display while offering a thin build.
The owner of OnlyFans was paid $701m (£523m) in dividends last year as the streaming platform best known for offering adult content readies for a potential multibillion-dollar sale.
The UK-based company, which offers a range of subscription-based content from sex workers and celebrities, reported revenue of $1.4bn in its 2024 financial year, up 9% compared with the year prior, accounts filed at Companies House on Friday show. Pre-tax profit rose 4% to $683.6m.
More people than ever are using the platform, with the total number of creator accounts – which split their proceeds 80:20 with the business – up by 13% to 4.6m. The total number of fan accounts grew by 24% to 377.5m.
Overall, OnlyFans took in $7.2bn from its subscribers in 2024, up from $6.6bn the previous year.
The company said “significant growth and profitability” had been driven by an increase in platform users and higher earnings for existing creators.
It brings a major payout for its owner, Leonid Radvinsky, the Ukrainian-American entrepreneur behind the site, adding to the more than $1bn in dividends he had already received from the business as he profits from connecting porn stars more directly with their audiences.
OnlyFans accounts show it paid $497m in dividends to its owner, Fenix International, which is owned by Radvinsky, in 2024, up from $472m in its 2023 financial year. The business paid a further $204m to its owner in five tranches over the course of December to April.
The platform’s chief executive, Keily Blair, a former privacy lawyer who joined the business three years ago, said OnlyFans had “expanded in new verticals, demonstrating the strength and potential of the platform across a wide range of genres” in the year.
It comes after reports that Fenix held talks to sell the business for $8bn to a consortium of investors led by the Forest Road Company, a US investment firm.
The platform was founded in 2016 by the British entrepreneur Tim Stokely, then 33 years old. It was then sold to Radvinsky, a previous owner of adult websites, for an undisclosed sum in 2018.
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While its largest market is in the US, OnlyFans remains headquartered in London. The business has millions of creators on its platform, but employs just 46 people directly.
Radvinsky has a low public profile, although his personal website states that he holds a degree in economics from Northwestern University in the US and lives in Florida. He describes himself as a venture capital investor. Before acquiring OnlyFans he owned an adult webcam business.
OnlyFans also noted in its accounts that it continued to invest in its trust and safety measures, amid tighter online safety rules in the UK. While the platform offers a variety of different content genres outside pornography, including sports and lifestyle, it has a strict 18+ age limit.
BANGKOK — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Friday that the company is discussing a potential new computer chip designed for China with the Trump administration.
Huang was asked about a possible “B30A” semiconductor for artificial intelligence data centers for China while on a visit to Taiwan, where he was meeting Nvidia’s key manufacturing partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the world’s largest chip maker.
“I’m offering a new product to China for … AI data centers, the follow-on to H20,” Huang said. But he added that “That’s not our decision to make. It’s up to, of course, the United States government. And we’re in dialogue with them, but it’s too soon to know.”
Such chips are graphics processing units, or GPUs, a type of device used to build and update a range of AI systems. But they are less powerful than Nvidia’s top semiconductors today, which cannot be sold to China due to U.S. national security restrictions.
The B30A, based on California-based Nvidia’s specialized Blackwell technology, is reported to operate at about half the speed of Nvidia’s main B300 chips.
Huang praised the the Trump administration for recently approving sales of Nvidia’s H20 chips to China after such business was suspended in April, with the proviso that the company must pay a 15% tax to the U.S. government on those sales. Chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, was told to pay the same tax on its sales of its MI380 chips to China.
As part of broader trade talks, Beijing and Washington recently agreed to pull back some non-tariff restrictions. China approved more permits for rare earth magnets to be exported to the U.S., while Washington lifted curbs on chip design software and jet engines. After lobbying by Huang, it also allowed sales of the H20 chips to go through.
Huang did not comment directly on the tax when asked but said Nvidia appreciated being able to sell H20s to China.
He said such sales pose no security risk for the United States. Nvidia is also speaking with Beijing to reassure Chinese authorities that those chips do not pose a “backdoor” security risk, Huang said.
“We have made very clear and put to rest that H20 has no security backdoors. There are no such things. There never has. And so hopefully the response that we’ve given to the Chinese government will be sufficient,” he said.
The Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet watchdog, recently posted a notice on its website referring to alleged “serious security issues” with Nvidia’s computer chips.
It said U.S. experts on AI had said such chips have “mature tracking and location and remote shutdown technologies” and Nvidia had been asked to explain any such risks and provide documentation about the issue.
Huang said Nvidia was surprised by the accusation and was discussing the issue with Beijing.
“As you know, they requested and urged us to secure licenses for the H20s for some time. And I’ve worked quite hard to help them secure the licenses. And so hopefully this will be resolved,” Huang said.
Unconfirmed reports said Chinese authorities were also unhappy over comments by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggesting the U.S. was only selling outdated chips to China.
Speaking on CNBC, Lutnick said the U.S. strategy was to keep China reliant on American chip technology.
“We don’t sell them our best stuff,” he said. “Not our second best stuff. Not even our third best, but I think fourth best is where we’ve come out that we’re cool,” he said.
China’s ruling Communist Party has made self-reliance in advanced technology a strategic priority, though it still relies on foreign semiconductor knowhow for much of what it produces.
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AP Videojournalist Taijing Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.
During her residency in emergency medicine, Archana Shrestha, MD, MS, would fall asleep at stoplights on the drive home after night shifts.
Archana Shrestha, MD, MS
“It happened a few times,” she recalled. “It was scary; I didn’t feel safe driving.” To power through night shifts, Shrestha snuck in 2-hour naps beforehand.
And maybe you’ve heard something like this from a senior physician: “If you see a chair, sit in it. If you see a bed, sleep in it. If you see food, eat it. That’s how you survive residency.”
Elsa Alaswad, MD, now a fourth-year neurology resident at the George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, DC, learned that “rule” from her cardiologist father. She trained herself to sleep when she had the chance. “It was untenable,” she said. “I wanted to quit so many times.”
Elsa Alaswad, MD
Segmenting sleep was just one of several habits that Shrestha, Alaswad, and many physicians have internalized for decades. From stress eating to repressing emotions, Shrestha said she learned these behaviors by emulating senior residents, attendings, and peers. Transmitted implicitly, these values and habits are part of medicine’s so-called “hidden curriculum.”
“It’s ironic. You basically learn: Do no harm to the patient, but it’s okay if you do harm to yourself,” Shrestha said.
Tania M. Jenkins, PhD
“There’s an understanding within medicine as old as the Hippocratic Oath that the patient comes first, and you come second,” explained Tania M. Jenkins, PhD, associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and author of Broken Promises: Why So Many Physicians are Sick and Tired.
Jenkins has interviewed hundreds of physicians about their work and heard the same refrain: “That translates to your own needs — drinking water, eating breakfast, getting enough sleep, or fresh air — being secondary to the patients’ needs.”
The result is that young physicians ingrain unhealthy routines and, often, never give them up, even years into their careers. That is, unless they make a conscious shift in mindset. The first step is recognizing the unhealthy habits and behaviors frequently learned during medical training.
The second step — well…are you willing to do anything about it?
Part 1: The Physical Toll
Ultimately, medical training comes down to one word: endurance. That means learning to ignore your bodily needs, said Stefanie Simmons, MD, FACEP, chief medical officer at the Dr Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation.
Shrestha agreed, “You need to tough it out; it doesn’t matter what is happening to your body. Whatever it takes is what is required.”
Hydrating and urinating. “When a patient codes, you’re not going to say, ‘I’m sorry, your intubation will have to wait 2 minutes while I pee,’” said Simmons, who once worked as an emergency medicine physician.
An unhealthy logic takes over: If I don’t drink anything, I won’t have to go. Unfortunately, as physicians know, urinating fewer than four times and consuming fewer than eight cups of water daily are risk factors for urinary tract infections, according to research. Plus, dehydration can impair cognitive performance, especially executive function and motor coordination.
Starvation or junk food. During her second year of residency, Alaswad would work from 6 AM to 6 PM. Many nights, she’d skip dinner and fall asleep, then leave for work the next morning without time to eat breakfast. “I trained myself not to need consistent meals,” she said. “I would be starving a lot of the time, and when I’d eat again, I’d be ravenous. I would lose a lot of weight and then regain it.”
During Shrestha’s medical training, “there were always cupcakes for someone’s birthday and doctors’ lounges stocked with pastries and donuts,” she said. Finding nourishing fare during night shifts, when the hospital cafeteria is closed, was even more difficult. “Students sometimes grab food at 2 AM from the vending machines or raid the nurse’s stations for ginger ale and soda crackers,” said Jenkins. “That’s what’s available.”
As any primary care doctor will tell you, a lack of nutrient-rich food can impair the immune system and lead to headaches, dizziness, irritability, and even fainting.
Working through illness. “During my first 2.5 years of residency, I would get sick almost every 3-4 weeks,” recalled Alaswad. “Night shifts were brutal for my health.” But she never took a day off. She didn’t feel she could.
“Getting sick doesn’t mean getting to be home recovering. It means getting to work while sick,” she said. “Because otherwise you’re seen as the weak link who lets down their peers. It’s hard to prioritize yourself when calling out sick means someone else must carry your load. There is simply no wiggle room.”
Can You Fix It?
The obvious fix is a series of tricks designed to make healthy choices easier or automatic: an apple or a bag of nuts in a coat pocket, exercise snacks, carry a water bottle, duck in a bathroom anytime a 2-minute window opens. You’ve heard them all before: This is a healthy lifestyle via opportunism.
But in the end, even if you remedy the physical toll — and some do — what are you fixing?
Understand not just what you learned, but how you learned it. Gutting it out, pushing through, demanding more from your body, and then pulling it all off…that’s an accomplishment. A lot of physicians value that accomplishment.
Working to eliminate this entire aspect of physician training requires a mindset shift, said Shrestha. And often that requires help. She spoke from personal experience. A few years ago, Shrestha began exercising and seeing a nutritionist to address her own weight gain. After improving her health, she became a certified wellness coach to help other doctors do the same. She founded the Mama Docs School and is also the chief wellness officer at Physician Wellness Solutions.
You are a physician, she said. What’s really driving your self-neglect? Are you willing to seek the help you need?
Part 2: The Psychological Toll
Medical trainees absorb psychological habits as well, which are often rooted in the culture of physicians as stoic and self-sacrificing, said Jenkins. These can be even more damaging than bad physical habits because they can in themselves take a physical toll.
Isolation. Isolation can contribute to depression, according to research. But many trainees don’t have time or energy to socialize. A common result is impaired personal relationships. “It’s a cycle of social isolation,” said Alaswad. “You’re isolated because of your work hours. And you’re too tired to see friends on the weekends — instead, you just want to sleep.”
Christen C. Hairston, PhD
Many medical students even avoid study groups, said Christen C. Hairston, PhD, associate dean, Center for Holistic Student Success, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta. The reason: They don’t want peers to witness them not always knowing the answers. So, they cram alone. Now that medical schools don’t always require students to attend classes, this isolation has become more acceptable, she added. “Being alone on a laptop is part of the culture now. It’s a lot easier to appear connected even if you’re really suffering.”
Repressing emotions. Shrestha recalled feeling surprised when a med student once started crying after a patient’s death. Then she took a step back. “I realized this med student was having a very normal human reaction to death. What was surprising was my surprise. I realized how much I had numbed myself. I’d gotten good at stuffing down emotions as a self-defense mechanism.”
Stefanie Simmons, MD, FACEP
Repressing emotions can feel necessary in medicine, especially during residency, said Simmons. But many doctors continue to hide even severe emotional distress. On licensing forms, applicants must disclose their personal experience with mental health struggles. If they admit such history, there’s been a “profound lack of transparency” around the consequences, she added.
The result is medical trainees who are suffering but feel they cannot get help. If they do seek treatment for mental health issues, they sometimes pay out of pocket for sessions or see providers in different health systems, as Jenkins has observed during her research.
Not to mention, getting help can be logistically challenging. “Residents are constantly being evaluated,” said Hairston. “Everyone is watching you all the time, and you want to show up in the best possible way. You don’t want to lose time in clinicals to go to a mental health appointment. Students get a half day for wellness sometimes, but that’s for everything they must do, including laundry,” she added.
Can You Fix It?
In an essay for Doximity, Shrestha described relearning how to respond to her needs appropriately. If she had a headache, she learned a glass of water might do the trick. If she felt stress, she acknowledged her emotions without reaching for a sweet treat to help blunt them.
To encourage her coaching clients today, she shares these messages with them:
“Doctoring is what you do. But it’s not your entire identity. It’s helpful to separate doctoring from all the other facets of yourself.
You must take care of yourself so you can have a long career and help more patients in the long run. If you don’t take care of yourself, who will? Certainly not your employer.
We’re not superheroes. We are smart, caring, hard-working humans, but humans nonetheless with real human needs for rest and recovery.
We take care of patients and advise them to take care of themselves. We should do the same thing for ourselves.”
Self-care doesn’t need to be a zero-sum game, Shrestha emphasized. Doing no harm should extend to doctors too, not only patients. It just might take a bit of unlearning.
Tom Robertson and Nick Champion de Crespigny will both return to the Wallabies line-up for Saturday night’s second Test against the Springboks in Cape Town in the Rugby Championship.
Dubbo product Robertson is one of three changes to the matchday 23 from the Wallabies side that stunned the world champions in Johannesburg last weekend.
He’ll start at loosehead prop, after James Slipper returned home under the HIA protocols, joining Billy Pollard and Taniela Tupou in the run on front row.
Champion de Crespigny is among the finishers named for the game, with five Force players in the 23-man team list.
Retiring scrum-half Nic White starts again, while back-rower Champion de Crespigny joins lock Jeremy Williams and hooker Brandon Paenga-Amosa as reserves.
Dylan Pietsch is unavailable due to a fractured jaw sustained last weekend.
Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt said: “The squad as a whole has recovered pretty well from what was a very draining and physical Test match on the highveld last week.
“We struggled to contain a powerhouse Springbok start last weekend and we know that we have to improve leading into what’s likely to be a bruising encounter in Cape Town on Saturday night.”
Match details
Wallabies v South Africa
Saturday 23 August, 11:10pm AWST
DHL Stadium, Cape Town
Live on Stan Sport
Wallabies team list
1. Tom Robertson (33 Tests) – #898; Dubbo Junior Rugby Club
2. Billy Pollard (11 Tests) – #958; Lindfield Junior Rugby Club
