Hey Snackers,
Alexa just fired shot #1 in the Ear Wars — Amazon's working on an Apple AirPods rival.
Markets were busy prepping for Friday's big March jobs report as stocks enjoyed their 6th straight day trending up.
We're getting bold aromas and notes of oak... from the earnings report of Constellation Brands. The liquor legend's beer sales jumped 9%, but wine slipped 8%. Blame that on 3 key trends:
"Rosé all day" is over... "Expensive low-alcohol rosé occasionally" is the new thing. Constellation's adjusting to those shifting tastes in a big way with its wine portfolio — "Non-premium" is out and vintage Brunello is in:
Constellation's making alcohol more like seltzer... Rising Modelo sales have Constellation focused on beer. Next is Corona Refresca, the Mexican brand's 1st non-beer (but beer-branded) option that comes this month. Look out for its Insta-worthy guava or coconut-lime flavor cans. Pairs well with those 3 trends above. ⬆️⬆️
Just one of those days... Shares of the electric car pioneer Tesla sank 8% Thursday on 1 business headline and 1 legal one:
63K eCars delivered — But that's down 31%... And Tesla got right down to the excuses for coming up short:
Tesla shares have no chill... The polarizing CEO attracts lovers and haters (think pineapple on pizza). Thursday's report makes Tesla's goal for 360K-400K car deliveries this year look unreachable, so investors piled on the hate and sold shares. They think it'll run out of money. Others still think it's the car company of the future.
Two struggling tech icons got together... The result is Bitmoji Party. Snap's launching video games with Bitmoji, the app it bought in 2016 to create custom avatars, the cuter cartoon vision of yourself. "Words With Friends" creator Zynga's adding 5 more games to Snapchat soon. All multi-player. All smartphone playable.
Engagement. Engagement. Engagement... Engagement. That's what social networks do. Snap's under pressure to add users and power engagement back up since Instagram copied its Stories in 2016. But this gaming move's not that new:
It always comes back to ads... A live Bitmoji Party brings physical friends together digitally, for free. And Snap rose 1% on hopes you'll love Snap-gaming so much you'll tolerate ads to earn virtual coins. Fortnite games hope you pay up for in-game purchases (picture digital you in a new costume). But ads are Snap's main game.
Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Roku, Tesla, and Amazon.