Cancel the IPO honeymoon... Celebrations didn't last long for Didi Chuxing. Last week, the Chinese ride-hail giant raised $4.4B in the largest US IPO of the year — and the biggest IPO by a Chinese company since ecomm giant Alibaba in 2014. Didi notched a $68B market cap on its first trading day (two-thirds of an Uber). But that's how it started.

• How it's going: Not well. Over the weekend, Chinese regulators ordered Didi to stop adding users and told app-store operators like Apple to take down Didi’s China service.
• Why: China's explanation was vague, but regulators said Didi collected personal info “in violation” of the country's rules. Now, China is carrying out a cybersecurity review.
• Didi's stock plunged 20% yesterday. BTW: two other recently IPO’d Chinese companies, Full Truck Alliance and Kanzhun, are facing the same restrictions.

Control > success... Five years ago, China might've hailed Didi's blockbuster IPO as a source of national pride. This year, China is driving the flops of its own biggest IPOs as it reminds tech companies who's in charge:

• Strike 1: The infamous Ant Group squashing. China halted the fintech giant's mega-IPO, and pressured it to restructure its biz.
• Strike 2: China ordered 34 of the country's largest tech cos, including TikTok-owner ByteDance, to comply with anti-monopoly laws or face “severe punishment."
• Strike 3: China's antitrust regulator slapped Alibaba with a record-breaking $2.8B fine.

All about that CURV... Torrid is the largest direct-to-consumer brand of women’s plus-size clothing in North America. You might remember it as a sub-brand of Hot Topic (RIP studded belts). Six years after breaking up with checkered skinny jeans, Torrid has its own hot topic: a successful IPO. Torrid stock has jumped 15% since its NYSE debut last week — ticker symbol: CURV.

• The profile: Torrid defines its style as "unapologetically youthful and sexy," and is "maniacally" focused on fit.
• The numbers: Nearly $1B in sales last year, and it's profitable. But its profit has been roughly halving each year since 2018.
• The source: Online sales made up 70% of Torrid's revenue last year while its 600+ stores were temporarily closed.

Don't curve your enthusiasm... The plus-sized market is significant, and it's growing. In the US, it serves a whopping 90M women wearing sizes 10 and up. Torrid says many brands treat plus-size customers as an afterthought, which is why the market has been underserved. Torrid's biggest strength: putting that customer base front-and-center.

• Mutate: Pfizer's vaccine was found to be less effective against the Covid Delta variant, while cases are rising among the unvaxed.
• JK: The Pentagon is canceling the $10B JEDI cloud contract that Microsoft won — and Amazon fought over.
• Crypto: SEC Chairman Gary Gensler told lawmakers that investor protection rules should apply to crypto exchanges, too.
• Ransomware: Hundreds of businesses were hit with a cyberattack that may be the work of Russia-based hacking group "REvil" (the same one behind the JBS meat hack).
• SPAC: Nextdoor is going public through a SPAC merger that values the neighborhood social network at $4.3B.
• Roborito: Grubhub plans to use self-driving robots to deliver food at college campuses this fall.

• Earnings expected from WD-40

Authors of this Snacks own shares of: Apple

ID: 1711349