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Facebook is testing a standalone dating app called Sparked, for "video speed dating with kind people" — what could go wrong?
Stocks cooled down from their record highs yesterday. Meanwhile, Coinbase notched an $86B market cap after its first day of trading. ICYMI: check out our newsletter and pod on Coinbase's big numbers.
Chase Sapphire Reserve... minus the reserves. Banks kicked off earnings season with jaw-dropping earnings. JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs reported first — Citi, BoA, and Morgan Stanley are up next. A year ago, banks added billions in rainy day funds to their reserves. 17M Americans were newly unemployed, so banks set aside $$$ to prep for loan losses. Think: defaults on mortgages and biz loans. But economic healing happened faster than banks expected — and big loan losses never materialized. In fact...
Bankers dropping bangers... Your quarterly reminder that Goldman's CEO is an EDM DJ. The IPO boom also helped banks, big time. JPM's investment banking revenue more than tripled, while Goldman's i-banking revenue soared 73%. Corporate and investment banking made up nearly half of JPM's revenue last quarter, and most of Goldman's.
Banks are selling shovels.. to the Wall Street gold rush. In the first quarter of the year, IPO companies raised a record $162B (compared to $37B in the first quarter of 2020). And SPACs have already raised more in 2021 than they did in all of 2020. Banks are the ones making IPOs and SPAC mergers happen — and they're getting paid big bucks for underwriting and advising. Banks with big Wall Street arms (like Goldman and JPM) are cashing in the most.
Très cool... When your name is so luxurious, it's a mouthful to say: Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (aka: LVMH) owns 75 luxe brands, including Dior, Bulgari, and Dom Pérignon. Yesterday, LVMH posted quarterly earnings that were a major glow-up from 2020. And its shares soared to a record.
Still in vogue... When the pandemic hit, big-spending Chinese and American tourists disappeared from Europe's shopping streets — problematic, since a quarter of LVMH's sales come from Europe. While Europe locked down again this year, LVMH proved it could thrive anyway: sales from Asia nearly doubled, while US sales popped 23%.
The "double lookback" is key... Earnings are compared to the year-ago period. We're now in a period where earnings are being compared to 2020 (read: pandemic results). Unless a company was a corona-conomy thriver, its earnings likely look much better in 2021 than in 2020. LVMH sales soared from the quarter that ended around April 2020 — that's not saying much. But when we do a "double lookback" to 2019, we see that LVMH's sales were 8% higher than they were in pre-pandemic times. LVMH passed the "double lookback" test last quarter, proving the strength of its brands.
Authors of this Snacks own shares of: JPM Chase
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