Hey Snackers,
Do you ever feel like a shell of your former taco? Taco Bell has resorted to serving plain black beans in hard shells, as national ingredient shortages plague restaurants. Crunchwrap Supreme = the wrapper.
Stocks ticked down to start the week, as investors suss out how the Delta spread might affect economic recovery. On that note: masks are back for everyone at Home Depot, McDonaldâs, and Target.
Insert Twitter side-eye⌠Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey just treated his other company Square to a massive shopping spree. Mobile payments company Square is Jack Dorsey's more valuable (and favorite) child. You might've seen Square's sleek payment tablets at craft coffee shops, or swiped your card through its little white reader at food trucks. Now, Square is buying âbuy now, pay laterâ (BNPL) firm Afterpay for a whopping $29B â its largest acquisition yet.
Good time to BNPL... Square stock jumped 10% on the news, while Afterpay soared 35%. Square shares have doubled in the past year, as people ditched cash during the pandemic. Now, it'll have a BNPL service to add to its digital payment offerings. And BNPL has been #trending.
Payment options affect purchasing behavior⌠Nearly half of Gen Z shoppers and 70% of Millennials are more likely to make a purchase if they can BNPL it. And since Square makes money off each card swipe and transaction, it wants to go where purchasing goes: Bank of America predicts the market for BNPL could grow 10 to 15X by 2025.
Elle Woods got a Harvard JD... And Reese Witherspoon got a Blackstone-backed acquisition. The actress and entrepreneur is selling her media company, Hello Sunshine, to a media venture that's backed by famous investment firm Blackstone. The deal values Hello Sunshine at $900M, according to WSJ's people familiar with the matter (#PFWTM). The almost-unicorn will be profitable this year â more than most startups can say.
Toss out the old script... Witherspoon started Hello Sunshine in 2016 in response to a lack of complex female roles in Hollywood. She noticed that even top actresses had to compete for one-dimensional characters. While male writers and directors still make up three-fourths of Hollywood, Hello Sunshine focuses on female creators and stories with strong female leads.
Creator > Content... It's the same idea as: "if you give a man a fish, he'll be hungry tomorrow â if you teach him how to fish"... he'll be feasting for years. There's a land-grab going on in Hollywood for high-quality movies and shows. Streamers and studios are scrambling to feed their content-hungry platforms. Instead of buying rights to others' content, acquisitions provide a long-term pipeline. More production companies could be snatched up as the content competition continues.
Authors of this Snacks own shares of: Square, Apple, Disney, Google, and Walmart
ID: 1746065