Monday Aug.05, 2019

Peak food delivery madness

_When a Seamless order has a bunch of special requests_
_When a Seamless order has a bunch of special requests_

Shark Week wasn't good to markets.

Stocks suffered their worst weekly wounds since December on a trifecta of economic news:

  1. The Fed cut interest rates for the first time since 2008, but not by as much as markets wanted.
  2. The US/China trade war reached Defcon Apple, with everything Americans buy that's Made In China getting tariffs starting in September.
  3. The July jobs report was solid (164K new jobs added), but overshadowed by #1 and #2 above.
Highs

Who's up...

All part of a well-balanced breakfast... Kellogg stock enjoyed its best day in 19 years thanks to snacks (feels meta saying this). Cereal sales fell another 5% as açai and oats replace Frosted Flakes. But the highlight was Kellogg's Pringles, Cheez-Its, and Pop-Tart snacks growing 4%. Plus, its ingredient-transparent RX Bar enjoyed 20% growth to cap off the snacks theme.

Magic Number = 50%... Apple popped 4% when it revealed that, for the first time since 2012, less than half of revenues came from iPhones. iPhone sales fell 12%, but investors are impressed by Apple's new profit puppies: recurring subscription revenues from Apple Music, iCloud, and Apple News+.

Not your dad's lawn company... Scotts Miracle-Gro is known for boosting homeowners' lawn and garden game. But the 151-year-old company enjoyed an 18% sales jump, powered by indoor pot growing. Scotts' hydroponics division provides the lights, nutrients, and greenhouse goodies for marijuana cultivation — and those sales surged 49% as legalization gains mojo.

Lows

...and who's down

We're issuing a "Code Blue"... for shares of Molson Coors. The nation's #2 brewer saw quarterly sales fall 4.4% as Americans swap light, frat-basement beers for rosé, canned wine, whiskeys, and artisan brews. It's launching a new "Made to Chill" ad campaign (no silver bullets or rocky mountains in this one) to regain some demand for its flagship Coors Light.

Buffering... Spotify shares dipped after announcing it reached 232M monthly active users, just short of analysts' expectations. It added too few paying subscribers, but the music streamer's big podcast bet is showing results: The number of pod-faithfuls on Spotify has doubled over the last year (and they spend twice as much time on the platform as music listeners do).

Someone dropped a banana... and Nintendo skidded on it. Shares dropped on word the gamer's profits fell 10% last quarter. This comes just before it launches Switch Lite — the lower-priced handheld game console it hopes will spark a new sales surge. Until then, it's partnering up with Chinese tech to push its Pokemon crew deeper into China.

ETA

Delivery apps just hit a climax: huge convenience, huge costs, huge competition

Past: pizza and Chinese. Today: everything... Food delivery apps are exploding the amount of restaurant food we eat at home — over 50% of all restaurant orders will be delivery/takeout by next year. 50%. And the surging industry is catered to by The Big Food Four:

  1. DoorDash (private, SF-based): Leading with 34% of the market. That’s gonna grow now that it acquired Square-owned Caviar for $410M last week.
  2. GrubHub (public, Chicago): The go-to in NYC, it owns 33% of the delivery-by-app market.
  3. Uber Eats (public, SF): 17% of all food delivery. And the favorite in Miami and Atlanta.
  4. Postmates (private, SF): It delivers 11% of our meals, boasts the most whimsical logo of them all, and is testing a sidewalk delivery bot called Serve.

Now they're moving in together to save money… Classic Millennial style. The Big Food Four are still unprofitable (“$5 off your first 5 orders”) — so instead of fighting each other over growth, it may be more efficient to just team-up. Case in point: DoorDash acquiring Caviar. We expect more mergers to come — that’s how the airlines became profitable. It happened with ride-hailing too, and it’s hitting e-scooters right now.

It's the sum of all current trends... We're connected to work through our phones and spend more time couch-side streaming than ever. And there's less time to cook if you're out trying to keep your Insta-feed fresh. These apps let us Netflix and not-have-to-grill. There’s downside though:

  • Fee madness: The GrubHub CEO accused his competitors of sneakily charging too many fees (service fee, delivery fee, food fee, fee fee...)
  • Pay problems: DoorDash was caught not giving tips to drivers, and delivery wages are still low.
  • Waste: Separate packaging for your curry, rice, spring rolls, utensils, and sriracha are piling up landfills.

What else we’re Snackin’

  • Work: How to say "no" at work without sounding like a jerk
  • Life: 6 apps for beating jet lag
  • Money: Index funds — what they are and how they work
  • Venture: 2 professors sent 80K fake emails to VCs to study gender and racial bias
  • Crypto: Why the new Apple/Goldman credit card arriving this month won't let you buy cryptocurrencies

This Week

Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Roku.

20190804-918304-2767965

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Business

The FTC vs. Big Handbag

The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block big tech, big grocery, big vacuum, and now, big… “affordable luxury handbag.”

Yesterday, the FTC sued to block Tapestry Inc’s $8.5B acquisition of Capri holdings. The agency is worried that a merger between Tapestry, which owns the Coach and Kate Spade brands, and Capri, which owns Michael Kors, would eliminate competition in the market.

The crux of the FTC's argument lies in the scope of the "accessible luxury" handbag market, where Tapestry competes with Michael Kors, with the FTC saying the following:

Where Tapestry and Capri most vigorously compete against one another – mainly between Tapestry’s Coach and Kate Spade brands against Capri’s Michael Kors brand – is in the “accessible luxury” handbag market. Today, Coach, Kate Spade and Michael Kors continuously monitor each other’s handbag brands to determine pricing and performance, and they each use that information to make strategic decisions, including whether to raise or lower handbag prices.

The deal would eliminate fierce head-to-head competition on many important attributes including on price, discounting, and design. Tens of millions of Americans that purchase Coach, Kade Spade, and Michael Kors products could face higher prices

While Capri and Tapestry are two of the largest players in this market, winning an antitrust case won't be so straightforward, as consumers have other options at similar price points, including Marc Jacobs (owned by competitor LVMH), Tory Burch, Cuyana, and Mansur.

The crux of the FTC's argument lies in the scope of the "accessible luxury" handbag market, where Tapestry competes with Michael Kors, with the FTC saying the following:

Where Tapestry and Capri most vigorously compete against one another – mainly between Tapestry’s Coach and Kate Spade brands against Capri’s Michael Kors brand – is in the “accessible luxury” handbag market. Today, Coach, Kate Spade and Michael Kors continuously monitor each other’s handbag brands to determine pricing and performance, and they each use that information to make strategic decisions, including whether to raise or lower handbag prices.

The deal would eliminate fierce head-to-head competition on many important attributes including on price, discounting, and design. Tens of millions of Americans that purchase Coach, Kade Spade, and Michael Kors products could face higher prices

While Capri and Tapestry are two of the largest players in this market, winning an antitrust case won't be so straightforward, as consumers have other options at similar price points, including Marc Jacobs (owned by competitor LVMH), Tory Burch, Cuyana, and Mansur.

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Tesla had a good ride, but the stock’s price destruction is historic

Few people have created as much value as Elon Musk. The iconoclastic entrepreneur took Tesla from a market capitalization of roughly $2 billion at the time of its IPO in 2010 to $1.2 trillion in early 2023. That’s a return of about 55,000%. Musk made a lot of people a lot of money.

On the other hand, Tesla shares are down nearly 60% since their all-time peak. The company has ceded ground in EVs, prompting a series of profit crushing price cuts to preserve market share. The cumulative loss in market value over that period is pushing $800 billion. Few corporate executives have presided over such a degree of value destruction.

And it could get worse, as people are bracing for an ugly update when Tesla reports after the close Tuesday.

Tech

Smaller AI models are in

Tech companies that have long touted the enormity of their AI models are now saying size doesn’t always matter.

Microsoft is the latest tech company to introduce smaller AI models, as part of its Phi-3 tech family. Last week Meta released two smaller models of its AI Llama 3 and earlier this year Alphabet did the same. All are open sourcing these models to encourage wider adoption.

Microsoft says its smallest model, which can fit on a smartphone and wouldn’t need to be connected to the internet to work, is nearly as good as OpenAI’s GPT-3.5. A Microsoft exec suggested this less expensive model could be a good fit for online advertisers, if not doctors.

Microsoft says its smallest model, which can fit on a smartphone and wouldn’t need to be connected to the internet to work, is nearly as good as OpenAI’s GPT-3.5. A Microsoft exec suggested this less expensive model could be a good fit for online advertisers, if not doctors.

$127

The average bitcoin-transaction fee hit an all-time high of $127 on Friday.

The temporary spike came as the halving cut miner rewards and traders forked over huge sums of BTC (skewing the average) to be included in the first post-halving block.

Adding fuel to the fee fire was the launch of Runes, a new protocol that lets developers create memecoins on top of the bitcoin blockchain. The debut was so popular that fees popped as traders fought for limited block space.

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Markets

Stock market gains for 2024 cut by more than half

All of the sudden, the stock market seems to be running out of steam.

There’s no big mystery here. War in the Mideast has pushed up oil prices, which will help keep inflation elevated. And annoyingly high price increases in March have already pushed the June Fed rate cuts the market was banking on farther into the uncertain future.

All that’s added up to higher interest rates and lower stock prices.

Tech
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AI needs so much electricity that tech companies are getting into the energy business

To accommodate tech companies’ pivots to artificial intelligence, tech companies are increasingly investing in ways to power AI’s immense electricity needs.

Most recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman invested in Exowatt, a company using solar power to feed data centers, according to the Wall Street Journal.

That’s on the heals of OpenAI partner, Microsoft, working on getting approval for nuclear energy to help power its AI operations. Last year Amazon, which is a major investor in AI company Anthropic, said it invested in more than 100 renewable energy projects, making it the “world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for the fourth year in a row.”

This can all feel like a bit of spin, as these tech companies move the narrative toward their use of green energy rather than questioning whether they truly need to be consuming so much energy in the first place.

That’s on the heals of OpenAI partner, Microsoft, working on getting approval for nuclear energy to help power its AI operations. Last year Amazon, which is a major investor in AI company Anthropic, said it invested in more than 100 renewable energy projects, making it the “world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for the fourth year in a row.”

This can all feel like a bit of spin, as these tech companies move the narrative toward their use of green energy rather than questioning whether they truly need to be consuming so much energy in the first place.

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