Dutch

Oct. 31 (UPI) — Rob Jetten, leader of the Dutch centrist-liberal D66 party, is likely to become the next prime minister of the Netherlands.

The election hasn’t been declared final, but analysis shows that the second-place Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders, can’t win. Wilders is a far-right, anti-Muslim candidate. D66 is 15,155 votes ahead of the Freedom party with 99.7% of votes counted.

As of Thursday, the vote was essentially tied, but D66 surged ahead.

Wilders complained that news analysis has decided the result so far and not the election council. “What arrogance not to wait for that,” the BBC reported. He has also claimed election tampering, posting on X: “No idea if all of this is true but it would be good if this were investigated.”

Jetten, 38, would be the youngest prime minister in Dutch history. He said Friday that the win was a “historic result for D66,” and he’s “very proud of that,” Politico reported. “At the same time, I feel a great responsibility to quickly start exploring options this week in order to form a stable and ambitious government.”

Now, he must create a coalition in the parliament then be elected by members. He will need at least three other parties to get the 76 seats needed for a coalition, the BBC said.

According to the BBC, the most obvious parties for coalition would be the conservative-liberal VVD, the left-wing Labour (PvdA)-GreenLeft alliance and the Christian Democrats. Dilan Yesilgöz, leader of the VVD, has said his party won’t work with the left.

Jetten said he wants a broad-based government from the center of Dutch politics and a coalition that represents the voters who backed other parties, BBC reported. The biggest issues in the country now are the housing shortage and asylum and migration.

Outgoing Prime Minister Dick Schoof was hand-picked by Wilders because his coalition partners wouldn’t support a far-right prime minister. Schoof predicted that it would be tough for Jetten to form a coalition. “I reckon I’ll still be prime minister at Christmas — I’d be surprised if it happened [by then],” BBC reported.

D66 party says no time to waste as begins challenge of finding three coalition partners on fractious centre-ground.

Dutch centrist leader Rob Jetten has claimed victory in a cliffhanger election dominated by immigration and housing after seeing off far-right contender Geert Wilders, saying his win proved populism can be beaten.

The 38-year-old head of the D66 party, which won the most votes in this week’s general election, is now set to become the youngest and first openly gay prime minister of the European Union’s fifth-largest economy.

“I think we’ve now shown to the rest of Europe and the world that it is possible to beat the populist movements if you campaign with a positive message for your country,” he said on Friday, as tallying from news agency ANP showed he was on course to win.

The pro-EU, liberal D66 tripled its seat count with an upbeat campaign and a surge in advertising spending, while Wilders and his PVV Freedom Party lost a large part of the support that had propelled him to a shock victory at the previous poll in 2023.

D66, which currently has 26 seats but could gain one more when every vote is counted, is now expected to lead talks to form a coalition government, a process that usually takes months.

The party will need to find at least three coalition partners to reach a simple majority in the 150-seat lower chamber of parliament, with the centre-right CDA (18 seats), the liberal VVD (22) and the left-wing Green/Labour group (20) viewed as contenders.

But there are questions about whether the VVD and Green/Labour will work together. VVD leader Dilan Yesilgoz said before the election an alliance with Green/Labour “would not work” and she wanted a centre-right coalition.

On Monday, the Green/Labour group will elect a new leader after former EU Vice President Frans Timmermans stepped down.

On Friday, Jetten urged mainstream parties from the left to the right to unite. “We want to find a majority that will eagerly work on issues such as the housing market, migration, climate and the economy,” he said.

‘Serious challenges’

Reporting from Amsterdam, Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen said Jetten faced “serious challenges” as informal coalition talks got under way, given that his party holds a razor-thin lead of only thousands of votes over Wilders and his PVV Freedom Party.

Jetten, an enthusiastic athlete who once ran as a pacemaker to Olympic champion Sifan Hassan, had said there was no time to waste “because the Dutch people are asking us to get to work”.

Wilders said Jetten was jumping the gun, pointing out that the results would only become official once the Electoral Council, rather than ANP – which collects the results from all municipalities in the Netherlands – had decided.

“How arrogant not to wait,” he wrote on X.

Although all mainstream parties had already ruled out working with him, Wilders had said he would demand to have a first crack at forming a coalition if his party was confirmed to have the most votes.

Although he saw support collapse, other far-right parties like the Forum for Democracy (FvD), a nationalist party that wants to withdraw from the EU’s Schengen system of open borders, performed well.

Confirmation of the result will come on Monday, when mail ballots cast by Dutch residents living abroad are counted.

Party leaders will discuss the next steps on Tuesday.

Support for Geert Wilders’ far-right, anti-Islam Freedom Party has declined as the centrist D66 party made major gains in the Dutch elections. The two parties are now neck-and-neck in the race to become the largest in parliament.

Oct. 30 (UPI) — The centrist liberal Democrats 66 surged in Wednesday’s Dutch elections, finishing in a virtual tie with the far-right Party for Freedom for most seats in parliament, according to reports.

The PVV and D66 were poised to win 26 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, The NL Times and Dutch News reported.

D66 had received several thousand votes more than PVV, though vote counting was ongoing. About 98% of the votes had been counted. Turnout was 78.4%.

The vote is being viewed as a refutation of the PVV and its leader, Geert Wilders, as they lost 11 seats. The party had 37 seats from the 2023 general election.

D66 picked up 17, from the nine seats it held following the last election.

With no party winning a majority, a coalition government will need to be formed, the leader of which is currently uncertain, though D66’s leader, Rob Jetten, appears a likely candidate.

If Jetten is named prime minister, he would not only he the country’s youngest prime minister in modern history at 38 years of age but the first to be openly gay.

“The positive forces have won!” Jetten said on X.

“I want to get to work for all Dutch people, because this is the land of us all!”

Wilders took to social media to declare: “The voter has spoken.”

“We had hoped for a different outcome but we kept our backs straight,” he said.

“We are more determined to fight than ever and still the second and perhaps even largest party of the Netherlands.”

The D66 ran on a platform of “freedom for everyone, but nobody left behind” that emphasized housing and education, climate and energy issues and healthcare with an emphasis on strengthening democracy.

“We are social liberals,” an English-language party report states. “This means that for us, freedom is only real when everyone has the opportunity to truly be free.”

On the other side of the political aisle, the anti-Islam PVV took a hardline stance on most issues, including immigration, such as tightening asylum rules and strengthening border policies.

“Islam, without exception, is the greatest existential threat to our freedom,” the PVV said in a report on its policies. “Worldwide, Islam is the breeding ground for extremism, oppression and terror.”

The party is ultranationalist and stands against funding asylum, developing nations, Ukraine‘s defense, the European Union and the fight against climate change.

“A shopping cart full of groceries at a normal price, being able to turn on the heater without fainting at the energy bill, a roof over your head, affordable healthcare where visiting a doctor or dentist isn’t punished financially, a decent old-age pension — that is the Netherlands of the PVV,” it said.

The right-leaning People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy was poised to pick up the third-most seats in the election with 22 seats followed by the Christian Democratic Appeal party with 18.

Polls suggest anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party on course to win largest number of seats.

People in the Netherlands are voting in a high-stakes snap election dominated by immigration and housing issues that will test the strength of the far right, which is on the rise across Europe.

Voting began at 7:30am (06:30 GMT) on Wednesday, and polls suggested anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders and his far-right Freedom Party (PVV) are on course to win the largest number of seats in the 150-member House of Representatives. However, three more moderate parties are closing the gap, and half the electorate is undecided.

After the results are known, parties have to negotiate the makeup of the next coalition government in a system of proportional representation that means no party can reach the 76 seats needed to govern alone.

The key question is whether other parties will work with Wilders – known as the “Dutch Trump”, a reference to the United States president – who sparked the elections by pulling the PVV out of a fractious four-way coalition and collapsing the previous government in a row over immigration.

All mainstream parties have ruled out a partnership with him again, finding his views too unpalatable and viewing him as an untrustworthy coalition partner. It seems likely that the leader of the party that polls second will most likely become prime minister.

Reporting from The Hague, Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen said the election campaign had been “dominated by calls to limit immigration” with “some violent protests against refugee centres”.

In a pre-election interview with the news agency AFP, Wilders said people were “fed up with mass immigration and the change of culture and the influx of people who really do not culturally belong here”.

“The future of our nation is at stake,” he said.

Rob Jetten – leader of the centre-left D66 party, which wants to rein in migration but also accommodate asylum seekers – told Wilders that voters can “choose again tomorrow to listen to your grumpy hatred for another 20 years or choose with positive energy to simply get to work and tackle this problem and solve it”.

Frans Timmermans, a former European Commission vice president who now leads the centre-left bloc of the Labour Party and Green Left, said in the final debate before the elections that he was “looking forward to the day – and that day is tomorrow – that we can put an end to the Wilders era”.

Beyond immigration, the housing crisis that especially affects young people in the densely populated country has been a key campaign issue.

The electoral commission has registered 27 parties and 1,166 candidates running for the House of Representatives.

That means a big ballot paper because it bears the names of all the parties and the candidates on each party’s list.

Polls close at 9pm (20:00 GMT).

As the Netherlands gears up for a snap parliamentary election on October 29, less than halfway through parliament’s usual four-year term following the collapse of the ruling coalition, the likelihood of another win for the country’s far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) is mounting.

An outright win is next to impossible. The Netherlands has always had a coalition government formed by a minimum of two parties due to its proportional representation electoral system, under which seats in parliament are awarded to parties in proportion to the number of votes they win.

The PVV, headed by Geert Wilders, also won the most votes in the last election in November 2023. It then partnered with three other far-right parties – the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB), New Social Contract (NSC), and the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) – to form a coalition government.

But in June, PVV made a dramatic exit from the coalition government over a disagreement on immigration policy. PVV had wanted to introduce a stricter asylum policy that included closing borders to new asylum seekers and deporting dual nationals convicted of crimes, but the other parties demanded further discussions.

In a dramatic move, Wilders took to X to announce that the failure by other parties to agree to PVV’s plans meant it would leave the coalition.

Coalition partners slammed this decision and accused Wilders of being driven by self-interest. VVD leader Dilan Yesilgoz said at the time that Wilders “chooses his own ego and his own interests. I am astonished. He throws away the chance for a right-wing policy”.

Following the pull-out, Prime Minister Dick Schoof – an independent – announced that he would resign and a snap election would be held this month.

Then, in August, the NSC’s Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp also resigned after he failed to secure support for new sanctions against Israel over its war in Gaza and the humanitarian situation in Gaza City. In solidarity with Veldkamp, other NSC party members left the coalition, leaving only two parties remaining.

Now, with an election imminent, opinion polls suggest the PVV will secure the most seats in the 150-seat parliament. While a winner needs 76 seats to form a government, no single party ever makes it to that figure, which has led to a history of coalitions.

According to a poll by the Dutch news outlet, EenVandaag, on October 14, the PVV is projected to secure 31 seats. The centre-left Green-Labour alliance (GroenLinks-PvdA) is polling at 25 seats, and the centre-right Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) is polling at 23.

PVV’s former coalition partner, the centre-right VVD, could take 14 seats and the BBB, four. So far, the NSC is not projected to secure any seats at all.

Immigration fears

At the end of September, EenVandaag polled 27,191 people and found that the main sticking point between voters – and, hence, between the leaders, PVV and GroenLinks-PvdA – is immigration. Half of all voters said it was the key issue on which they would be voting this year. Housing was the second-most important issue at 46 percent, and “Dutch identity” came third at 37 percent.

While the PVV is firmly anti-immigration and wants to impose a much stricter border policy and asylum laws, GroenLinks-PvdA would prefer to allow a net migration figure of 40,000 and 60,000 migrants per year.

Tempers are running high over this issue. Last month at The Hague, a right-wing activist known as “Els Rechts” organised an anti-migration protest that attracted 1,500 attendees. According to reports, protesters threw stones and bottles at the police, set a police car alight and smashed windows of the left-wing Democrats 66 (D66) party offices.

While left-wingers argue that the immigration issue has been wildly hyped up by the far right, they are losing control of the narrative.

Esme Smithson Swain, a member of MiGreat, a Dutch non-governmental campaign group that calls for freedom of movement and equal treatment for migrants in the Netherlands, told Al Jazeera that the far right in the Netherlands and in the United Kingdom, more widely, had “constructed a narrative that there is a migration crisis”.

“They’ve managed to construct this idea of a crisis, and that distracts our attention away from populism, away from arms trades, away from social services and the welfare state being sold off.”

Whatever its merits, the right-wing message that immigration is at the root of many social ills seems to be taking hold. The far-left, pro-immigration BIJ1 party, which rejects this message, is not projected to win any seats at all in this election.

Immigration “is a key term especially for right-wing political parties to win the election”, Noura Oul Fakir, a candidate for the BIJ1 party, told Al Jazeera. “We don’t focus on it because we look at everything that’s been going on from a systemic point of view, that every form of oppression is interlinked … This fight for equality and justice, it’s about more than just immigration, but it’s also interlinked with other issues that we see nowadays.”

People ‘more emboldened to express racist views’

By January 1, 2024, the Netherlands was hosting 2.9 million migrants (16.2 percent of the population), compared to the average across European Union member states of 9.9 percent (44.7 million people in total).

Similarly, Germany hosts 16.9 million migrants (20.2 percent of the population); France, 9.3 million (13.6 percent of the population); Spain, 8.8 million (18.2 percent of the population); and Italy, 6.7 million (11.3 percent of the population), according to figures from the EU.

Mark van Ostaijen, an associate professor in public administration and sociology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, explained that immigration has become a mainstream talking point in “housing, care, educational and cultural policy domains”.

For instance, the Netherlands is currently short of 434,000 homes, including for 353,000 asylum seekers and 81,000 Dutch first-time buyers, according to figures commissioned by the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning (VRO).

Immigration has, therefore, been blamed for what is seen as a housing crisis.

According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), 316,000 migrants arrived in the country in 2024, 19,000 fewer than in 2023. But CBS also found that population growth is still mainly down to net migration, with the largest number of migrants coming from Ukraine and Syria.

“I think this is indeed something that will continue the electoral legitimacy of far-right parties, or right-wing parties, even more, given the fact that the Netherlands was already quite leaning towards the conservative angle,” van Ostaijen told Al Jazeera.

“This will be a topic that will haunt our politics and our democratic decision-making and discourse for quite a while,” he said.

Anecdotal evidence bears this out. Fakir has noticed a change in the experiences of immigrant residents she and her colleagues have spoken to in the country following the growth of the PVV.

“In their personal life [they have seen] a noticeable shift where people feel more free or emboldened to express racist views, both online and in real life. Others are telling them those classic things of ‘go back to your own country, or you’re not Dutch’,” she said.

For Nassreddin Taibi, a recent graduate who works as a political analyst and plans to vote for GroenLinks-PvdA, the anti-immigration protests at the Hague “further cemented polarisation among Dutch voters” and have caused centrist parties to fall into line with the right-wing narrative.

“These protests have influenced the discourse in the sense that centrist parties now say that cutting immigration is necessary to win back trust of voters in politics,” he said.

Nearly half of voters still undecided

While the far-right PVV is projected to win the most seats in this election, it will still face an uphill journey to form a government, as other parties such as the centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) have ruled out joining a coalition government.

Furthermore, the PVV’s leader, Wilders, has not escaped controversy with his Islamophobic comments and anti-migration stance despite the rise in anti-immigration sentiment across the country as a whole.

Notable incidents over the years include Wilders’ likening of Islam to Nazism in 2007 and his reference to the Muslim holy book, the Quran, as “fascist” in a letter to a Dutch news outlet. His letter and comments led to Wilders being prosecuted for inciting hatred and discrimination, which he denied. In 2011, he was acquitted by a judge who ruled that his comments had fallen within the scope of free speech.

More recently, in August this year, Wilders posted an image on X that depicted a smiling, blonde and blue-eyed woman, representing the PVV; and a wrinkled, angry-looking elderly woman wearing a headscarf, representing the PvdA. It was accompanied by the words: “The choice is yours on 29/10.”

Aan U de keuze op 29/10 pic.twitter.com/royhcInDlm

— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) August 4, 2025

Fake news and misinformation have also driven the rise in far-right narratives, analysts say.

The Facebook page ‘Wij doen GEEN aangifte tegen Geert Wilders’ (We are NOT filing charges against Geert Wilders), which claims to be a PVV supporters’ page boasting 129,000 followers, said it does not intend to be “discriminatory, hateful, or incite violence”, but has nevertheless posted AI-generated images of this nature.

In one such image, which received 1,700 likes, a white family is seemingly being harassed by men of colour.

In another, a white woman is seen in a supermarket paying for groceries while surrounded by Muslim women wearing hijabs and niqabs, with the caption: “No mass immigration, no Islamisation, no backwardness of the Dutch.” The post received 885 likes.

While the outgoing home affairs minister, Judith Uitermark, has said the government is examining new ways to combat fake news, she added that the Netherlands is somewhat protected from the rise of extremism by its proportional representation system, under which no one party ever wins a majority.

Still, the Dutch Data Protection Authority has warned voters not to use AI chatbots to help them decide who to vote for.

And a large number are still deciding. EenVandaag found that some 48 percent of voters are still undecided about which candidate they will choose. If the GroenLinks-PvdA can disengage from right-wing talking points and, instead, focus on its own policies more, it may perform better than expected, analysts say.

This will be no easy task, however.

“We find ourselves doing this also as a civil society organisation, as campaigners, trying to fight off the narrative and fight off the kind of populist ideals of the far right faster than we can push for our own agenda as well. And I think a lot of the time that leaves left-wing parties in the Netherlands seeming a bit hollow,” Swain said.

Still, she says that she is holding out hope for this election, despite what feels like a “vast and growing far-right bulk of the population”.

“I think it’s very easy to kind of feel that division between ‘us and them’. Us campaigning on the left and this growing mass of the far right,” Swain said.

“We need to tackle fighting the influence of lobbying and of fake news in our political structures. And I think that becoming more united as a population would naturally fall from that.”

Body finds that chatbots provide biased advice, including by leading voters to the hard-right Party for Freedom.

The Netherlands’s data protection watchdog has cautioned citizens against consulting with artificial intelligence on how to vote, warning that popular chatbots provide a “highly distorted and polarised view” of politics.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority said on Tuesday that an increasing number of voters were using AI to help decide who to vote for, despite the models offering “unreliable and clearly biased” advice.

The watchdog issued the warning as it released the results of tests conducted on four popular chatbots – ChatGPT, Gemini, Mistral, and Grok – in the run-up to parliamentary elections on October 29.

The research found that the chatbots more often recommended parties on the fringes of the political spectrum when asked to identify the three choices that best matched the policy preferences of 1,500 fictitious voter profiles.

In more than half of cases, the AI models identified the hard-right Party for Freedom (PVV) or left-wing Green Left-Labour Party as the top choice, the watchdog said.

Parties closer to the political middle ground – such as the right-leaning People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy and the centre-left Democrats 66 – were recommended much less often, according to the watchdog.

Meanwhile, some groupings, including the conservative Christian Democratic Appeal and left-leaning Denk, were “almost never suggested”.

Monique Verdier, deputy chair of the authority, said that voters who turned to AI risked being encouraged to vote for parties that do not align with their preferences.

“This directly impacts a cornerstone of democracy: the integrity of free and fair elections. We therefore urge voters not to use AI chatbots for voting advice because their operation is neither transparent nor verifiable,” Verdier said in a statement.

“Additionally, we call on chatbot providers to prevent their systems from being used as voting guides.”

The October 29 election comes after the PVV, led by anti-immigration firebrand Geert Wilders, pulled its support for the government after its coalition partners refused to back a 10-point plan to radically curtail immigration.

Wilders’s PPV, which scored one of the biggest upsets in Dutch political history by winning the most seats in the 2023 election, has consistently led opinion polls before next week’s vote.

While the PPV is on track to win the most seats for a second straight election, it is all but certain to fall far short of a parliamentary majority.

The other major parties in the Netherlands, which has been governed by coalition governments without interruption since the 1940s, have all ruled out supporting the PPV in power.

Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof joins Talk to Al Jazeera at a pivotal moment for Europe and the Middle East. After his coalition collapsed, he reflects on leading the Netherlands through crises at home and abroad.

From the war in Gaza and sanctions on Israel to NATO, migration and United States President Donald Trump’s stance on Ukraine, Schoof gives rare insight into how the Netherlands navigates global fault lines. A politically unaffiliated leader and former intelligence chief, he speaks candidly about power, justice and Europe’s future.

While no one can be certain what stocks may or may not “pop” in any five-year window, investors can tilt the odds in their favor by looking for businesses with a long list of potential market-beating catalysts.

I believe the upstart handcrafted beverages chain Dutch Bros (BROS -0.53%) perfectly exemplifies this notion.

Dutch Bros is home to several promising catalysts that could drive its stock price higher between now and 2030.

Although I’m willing to predict that the up-and-coming company could help make investors richer by 2030, Dutch Bros’ current business developments paint an even brighter picture beyond that point.

Image source: Dutch Bros.

Dutch Bros’ numerous catalysts

Dutch Bros’ share price has more than doubled in just the last year alone.

Despite this run, I believe there are five specific reasons why the company has ample room to rise and help make investors richer by 2030.

Dutch Bros is more than just coffee

Far from a traditional hot coffee chain, Dutch Bros generates 87% of its sales from ice or blended drinks. It also receives roughly one-quarter of its sales from its Rebel energy drinks.

This is a powerful differentiator for Dutch Bros, as it caters directly to its youngest and most important (for the long term) customers — Gen Z — who strongly prefer iced, blended, and energy drinks over hot coffee.

Industry experts project the coffee industry to grow 7% by 2030, whereas the energy drink category should grow more than 40% by 2032. This shift toward energy drinks should keep the company front and center on the beverage scene, thanks to its outsized allocation to energy drinks.

Immense store count expansion potential

Dutch Bros has 1,043 locations, but recently announced its stretch goal of 2,029 stores by 2029. While doubling its store count in four years may sound like a reach, the company is on pace to open around 160 in 2025 and plans to grow its new shop count by a mid-teens percentage annually for the next few years.

If management meets this bold goal and maintains its steady cash generation, I would feel terrific about my prediction being accurate.

Best yet, the Dutch Bros growth story doesn’t stop here. Over the long term, the company believes it can reach more than 7,000 locations. Currently operating in just 18 states (but entering five new ones in 2025), Dutch Bros’ growth story should persist well beyond 2030.

With its newest 2024 shops delivering annual unit volumes similar to those built in 2022 or earlier, I’m confident in management’s ability to continue expanding geographically in a profitable manner.

Cash flows are now positive

Perhaps the biggest reason I’m optimistic about Dutch Bros’ ability to enrich our portfolios is that it recently reached breakeven on a free cash flow (FCF) basis.

BROS Free Cash Flow = Cash From Operations-Capital Expenditures data by YCharts

Despite the company’s rapid store count growth (which creates heavy capital expenditures), Dutch Bros has reached positive FCF. Said another way, management can now fund its growth ambitions in-house rather than through debt or shareholder dilution from issuing new shares.

Additionally, if Dutch Bros wasn’t spending heavily on capex (just a thought experiment), it would already be a bona fide cash machine, generating 18 cents of cash from operations for every $1 in sales.

Mobile ordering is still young

While the company’s expansion plans may take center stage in its growth story, Dutch Bros’ recent rollout of mobile ordering at all locations could prove to be a promising growth catalyst on its own.

Customers are rapidly adopting mobile orders, but these orders still only account for 11.5% of the company’s total transactions. Every additional order that switches from being placed in the drive-thru lane to mobile offers throughput improvement for Dutch Bros.

During the company’s second-quarter earnings call, Chief Executive Officer Christine Barone explained that mobile ordering has already delivered an order frequency lift, while also being a popular option in the morning.

Whereas customers may have previously gone without a beverage if their time was limited, the grab-and-go feasibility provided by mobile ordering could help add a number of once-missed sales.

Food options

Dutch Bros currently generates less than 2% of its sales from food. While Starbucks has shown that adding food to a beverages-focused business isn’t the easiest feat to pull off, the fact remains that leading coffee chains generate one-fourth of their sales from food.

Currently, Dutch Bros is piloting a food program that could be fully rolled out by 2026 and is already seeing incremental growth in its morning orders. If the company inches anywhere closer to the industry average of 25% of sales from food, it could be a boon for Dutch Bros’s same-store sales.

Dutch Bros’ valuation

While there is a lot to like about Dutch Bros, its price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 199 undoubtedly scares many investors away.

However, this may not be the best valuation to assess the company with. Revisiting the cash from operations figures examined earlier, and comparing them to the company’s market capitalization, Dutch Bros stock trades at 47 times CFO.

Yes, this is still a premium valuation, but for a company with a reasonable chance to double its store count over the next four years, it isn’t excessive in my opinion.

Although the company still has to execute, numerous catalysts indicate that Dutch Bros can help make investors rich by (and more importantly, beyond) 2030.

Formula One returns after the summer break and ahead of Sunday’s race day, BBC Sport’s Harry Benjamin picks his five things to look out for at the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort.

READ MORE: How to follow Dutch Grand Prix on the BBC

Available to UK users only.

Mercedes’ George Russell was fourth fastest, ahead of Verstappen’s Red Bull and the Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton, who was 0.848secs off the pace.

The seven-time champion had two spins during the day, both times without hitting anything.

The first was in the first session, when he spun entering Hugenholtz, the second when he ran a little wide out of the tricky right-hander at Turn Nine and put his rear wheel on to the grass.

Nevertheless, Hamilton ended the day 0.096secs and two places ahead of team-mate Charles Leclerc, an encouraging start to the final part of the season after a difficult end to the first for the Briton.

Hamilton said: “Not been the worst of days. We were making progress. We were quite far off in P1, a lot further than normal. We progressed but still quite a chunk off so we have some work to do overnight.

“Pace-wise we are where we are. I don’t know how we’re going to find 0.8secs but we will try our best.”

He said of his spins: “First one was just pushing too much. Also ride quality is not where we’d want it, so the car is quite unpredictable. The second one I touched the grass and had a snap.”

Leclerc described it as “a very, very, very, very difficult Friday, probably the worst of the season” and said they were losing “90% of the time” in two corners. He did not name them, but it was the tricky two right-handers of Turns Eight and Nine.

Leclerc said it would take a “miracle” to turn the situation around.

Red Bull’s Yuki Tsunoda was seventh and Alex Albon was another to crash in the second session in the Williams, going straight on at the first corner, Tarzan, and breaking his front wing against the barriers.

Verstappen himself had an off after the end of the first session, misjudging his braking into the Tarzan hairpin that starts the lap after doing a practice start.

Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli crashed in the first session, running off track at Turn Nine and ended the second session 12th.

Dutch Bros (BROS 6.46%) stock is finally getting some market love. It’s more than doubled in value over the past year, and it trades at a P/E ratio of 193. That’s expensive by almost any standard, but it’s not the only valuation ratio worth a look. The valuation could also be justified given the company’s growth prospects.

Here’s a deeper look.

Image source: Dutch Bros.

High growth, high profits for Dutch Bros

With performance as good as Dutch Bros’ has been posting since it went public in 2021, it’s surprising that it’s taken the market this long to take notice. It reliably reports high sales growth, and profits continue to rise. In the 2025 second quarter, revenue increased 28% year over year, while net income rose from $22.2 million last year to $38.4 million this year.

However, there were reasons the market was concerned until recently. It didn’t report its first annual profit until 2023. In addition, investors were worried about its chances when same-store sales growth was low, even in negative territory for a short time, and most of the increase was coming from price hikes.

Dutch Bros has moved way past that now. Earnings per share (EPS) increased from $0.03 to $0.34 in 2024, and from $0.12 to $0.20 in the 2025 second quarter year over year. Same-store sales were up 6.1% in the quarter, with a 3.7% rise in transactions.

More importantly, analysts expect EPS to increase about 350% over the next three years.

Data by YCharts.

There’s a lot of expectation here. Dutch Bros has a huge growth runway in opening new stores, and net income is following. While there’s some growth built into Dutch Bros’ current price, the opportunity is enormous, which is why it commands a premium valuation. As for other valuation methods, the forward one-year P/E ratio is a more reasonable 74, and the price-to-sales ratio is a very reasonable 5.

Aug. 23 (UPI) — Lawmakers in the Netherlands on Saturday rejected a motion that would recognize an independent Palestinian state and measures that would sanction Israel.

The punitive measure would have banned the importation of products made in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and banned the Dutch government from buying Israeli-made weapons, Politico reported.

A majority of ministers voted to ask the Israeli government to allow journalists into Gaza and to apply “maximum pressure” on nations that condone the actions of Hamas leaders.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has reported the deaths of about 61,000 Gazans after Hamas and other militants attacked and killed about 1,200 Israeli civilians and kidnapped another 250, about 50 of whom remain in captivity or have died inGaza.

The casualty figures reported by Hamas do not separate civilian deaths from Hamas deaths and have been challenged by Israel and others.

Saturday’s vote came a day after Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp on Friday night resigned to protest the government’s refusal to sanction Israel over conditions in Gaza.

The resignations occurred after the Rome-based Integrated Food Security Phase Classification on Friday declared a famine in Gaza.

Several members of the Netherlands’ New Social Contract Party likewise resigned on Friday — two months after the conservative Party for Freedom quit the Dutch government over differences arising from immigration concerns.

Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders demanded that the government greatly reduce the number of immigrants allowed to enter the Netherlands and resigned from the government, along with other party members, in early June.

Snapelections are scheduled on Oct. 29, and a caretaker government is in place until a new one is formed after the October election.

Caspar Veldkamp and other ministers step down after cabinet rejects sanctions against Israel, prompting broader political upheaval.

Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp has resigned after failing to secure cabinet support for additional sanctions against Israel over its military onslaught in Gaza.

Veldkamp, a member of the centre-right New Social Contract party, said on Friday that he could not achieve agreement on “meaningful measures” and had repeatedly faced resistance from colleagues over sanctions already in place.

His efforts included imposing entry bans on far-right Israeli ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, citing their role in inciting settler violence against Palestinians.

Veldkamp also revoked three export permits for navy ship components, warning of “deteriorating conditions” in Gaza and the “risk of undesirable end use”.

“I also see what is happening on the ground in Gaza, the attack on Gaza City, and what is happening in the West Bank, the building decision for the disputed settlement E1, and East Jerusalem,” Veldkamp told reporters.

His departure leaves the Netherlands without a foreign minister as the European Union navigates security guarantees for Ukraine and continues talks with the United States over tariffs.

Following his resignation, all New Social Contract ministers and state secretaries confirmed their support for Veldkamp and resigned from the caretaker government in solidarity.

Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen, reporting from Berlin on developments in the Netherlands, said Veldkamp was “under increasing pressure from lawmakers in parliament, especially from the opposition who have been requesting stricter sanctions against Israel”.

While Veldkamp had announced travel bans for two Israeli ministers a few weeks ago, Vaessen said the foreign minister was facing growing demands after Israel’s attacks on Gaza City and the “increasing aggression” that the Dutch government “should be doing more”.

“Veldkamp has also been pushing for a suspension of the trade agreement that the EU has with Israel,” Vaessen added, noting that the Dutch foreign minister had “increasingly become frustrated because Germany was blocking that. So there was also this push from the Dutch parliament that the Netherlands shouldn’t wait anymore for any European sanctions but should put sanctions on Israel alone.”

Europe-Israel relations

Despite limited Dutch sanctions on Israel, the country continues to support the supply chain of Israel’s F-35 fighter jet.

Research from the Palestinian Youth Movement shared with Al Jazeera in June shows that ships carrying F-35 components frequently dock at the port of Rotterdam, operated by Danish shipping company Maersk.

The F-35 jets have been used by Israel in air strikes on Gaza, which have left much of the Strip in ruins and contributed to the deaths of more than 62,000 people since October 2023.

Earlier this week, the Netherlands joined 20 other nations in condemning Israel’s approval of a large West Bank settlement expansion, calling it “unacceptable and contrary to international law”.

Meanwhile, Israel’s military attacks on Gaza continue, forcing civilians from Gaza City southwards amid mounting famine. A global hunger monitor confirmed on Friday that residents of Gaza City and surrounding areas are officially facing famine conditions.

No successor to Veldkamp has been announced. The caretaker Dutch government, which has been in place since the collapse of the previous coalition on June 3, is expected to remain until a new coalition is formed following elections in October, a process that could take months.

Marc Marquez extended his lead in the MotoGP world championship standings with victory in the Dutch MotoGP despite starting on the second row in Assen.

The Spaniard, 32, who also won Saturday’s sprint race after recovering from two crashes in practice, finished clear of Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi.

His Ducati team-mate Francesco Bagnaia, who had been chasing a fourth consecutive win at the Dutch track, was third.

Marquez’s younger brother Alex, who is his closest rival in the standings, fractured his hand in a crash with Pedro Acosta.

The 29-year-old, who is now 68 points behind his older brother, jumped back to his feet but was gingerly holding his wrist as he was biked back to the pit lane and was taken to the medical centre for a check-up.

“I am sorry for Alex, my father says he injured a finger, but racing is like this,” said Marc.

“Of course I am super happy with the job the team did on Friday [after the crashes] and all weekend, amazing weekend.

“Assen is not one of my best tracks.”

Although it was Bagnaia who made the best start, Marquez moved into second on the second lap and passed his team-mate on the fifth lap.

He set the fastest race lap at the halfway mark of the 26-lap race and went on to claim his sixth victory of the season to move him level with the legendary Giacomo Agostini on 68 elite wins, but still 21 adrift of Valentino Rossi.

The next race weekend is in Germany on 12-13 July and will mark the mid-point of the 22-race season.

Marc Marquez beats Marco Bezzecchi in a drama-filled race that claimed his brother Alex, who crashed out of the contest.

Marc Marquez delivered a clinical masterclass at MotoGP’s Cathedral of Speed to claim victory at the Dutch Grand Prix while his brother and closest contender Alex suffered a race-ending crash that left him with a fractured hand.

As Assen celebrated its centenary of motorcycle racing, the elder Marquez seized control on the second lap on Sunday and did not look back as he extended his championship advantage to a commanding 68 points over Alex as he seeks a seventh title.

Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi finished second while Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia came third, with the two-times champion now staring at a daunting 126-point gap to his teammate after 10 rounds.

Bagnaia had won the last three races in Assen but despite taking the lead early on, he was pushed down to fourth place before he recovered to finish on the podium ahead of KTM’s Pedro Acosta.

Marc, who crashed hard twice on Friday, also equalled motorcycling great Giacomo Agostini with 68 premier class victories and now sets his sights on his former rival Valentino Rossi who finished his career with 89 wins.

Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo had claimed pole position but crashed in Saturday’s sprint – where Marc claimed his ninth victory
of the season – and the Frenchman was slow off the line while Bagnaia made the perfect start.

Gresini Racing’s Alex was in second place but on turn one of the next lap, Marc made his move to overtake his brother and slot in behind his teammate, waiting patiently to pounce with 24 laps left in the race.

Alex briefly lost his concentration and Bezzecchi, sporting a new aero package on his Aprilia, squeezed his way past the Gresini rider while Acosta also made an overtake stick to push the younger Marquez down to fifth.

Alex Marquez crashes out

Up front, Marc found a gap before the final chicane on lap five to overtake Bagnaia and take the lead while his brother Alex crashed heavily when he leaned into Acosta and lost his balance when they made contact in a battle for fourth.

Alex appeared to lock his front tyre in the incident, which gave a puff of smoke as the bike tipped its rider straight onto the ground.

He was immediately taken to the medical centre where a left hand fracture was confirmed, with Gresini saying the 29-year-old would fly to Madrid for surgery later on Sunday. More information about Alex’s expected recovery timeline is expected to emerge on Monday.

Bagnaia seemed to be losing pace as both Bezzecchi and Acosta moved into podium positions. But the Italian Ducati rider snatched third place back from Acosta at the end of lap 14 to set his sights on Bezzecchi.

But whatever Bezzecchi did to put pressure on Marc, the six-times MotoGP champion did not budge as he managed his tyres and maintained his pace until he took the chequered flag.

The MotoGP calendar has a weekend off before they reunite for the German Grand Prix in a fortnight.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — President Trump has a sleepover this week in the Netherlands that is, quite literally, fit for a king.

Trump is visiting The Hague for a summit of the 32 leaders of NATO on Wednesday, and his sleeping arrangements have received a significant upgrade.

He is scheduled to arrive Tuesday night and be whisked by motorcade along closed-off highways to the Huis Ten Bosch palace, nestled in a forest on the edge of The Hague, for a dinner with other alliance leaders hosted by Dutch King Willem-Alexander.

Trump had been expected to stay at a swanky hotel in the town of Noordwijk on the Dutch North Sea coast, but not anymore.

A spokesperson for the Dutch government information service, Anna Sophia Posthumus, told the Associated Press that the president will be sleeping at the palace that is home to Willem-Alexander, his Argentine-born wife, Queen Maxima, and their three daughters, though the princesses have mostly flown the royal nest to pursue studies.

Parts of Huis Ten Bosch palace date back to the 17th century. It has a Wassenaar Wing, where the royal family live, and a Hague Wing that is used by guests. The centerpiece of the palace is the ornate Orange Hall, named for the Dutch Royal House of Orange.

The palace is also close to the new U.S. Embassy in the Netherlands.

Trump is no stranger to royal visits. In 2019, he dropped in to Windsor Castle for tea with Queen Elizabeth II during a tumultuous visit to the United Kingdom.

Corder writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Molly Quell in The Hague and Danica Kirka in London contributed to this report.

He has been dubbed the “Dutch Donald Trump”.

Geert Wilders has pulled his Party for Freedom (PVV) out of the coalition that governs the Netherlands in a row over immigration policy.

It has plunged the NATO ally into political turmoil and new elections.

After years in opposition, the PVV won the most votes in 2023 by tapping into rising populism in Europe with promises to reduce immigration.

Wilders has pushed for a 10-point plan that calls for the militarisation of Dutch borders as well as the repatriation of all Syrian nationals – something his coalition partners rejected.

Before resigning, Prime Minister Dick Schoof labelled Wilders’s actions “irresponsible”, coming at a critical time for Europe.

So was this a reckless or strategic move by Wilders?

And will it deepen uncertainty in the region, only weeks before a NATO summit in The Hague?

Presenter:

Tom McRae

Guests: 

Henk van der Kolk – Professor of electoral politics at the University of Amsterdam

Zoe Gardner – Independent researcher covering migration policy

Pieter Cleppe – Editor-in-chief at BrusselsReport.eu