Hey Snackers,
If you need a break from our success-obsessed work culture, celebrate Finland's National Day of Failure by trying to fail more. Failure inspo: “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.” #Fail2Win #FailSoHard
The tech-heavy Nasdaq soared for its best day in a month, boosted by a 6% jump in Apple ahead of the Fruit's big event today. Expect a fresh iPhone unveil.
The Red Sox could become a public stock in an $8B merger
Forget ringing the NYSE bell... this IPO is more of a 1st-pitch type event. Boston Red Sox owner John Henry is reportedly in talks to take the Sox public (SOX stock?) through an $8B deal. Henry's holding company Fenway Sports Group also co-owns Liverpool, the English soccer team whose fans might be even more heated than Boston fanatics (intense).
- Meet RedBall Acquisition Corp: That's the SPAC — aka, the public company without a company — that would merge with Fenway to take the Sox public.
- SPACs go public for the sole purpose of one day acquiring a real company and taking it public via marriage (romantic).
- RedBall raised $575M in August to buy sports-related businesses — based on its name, it probably always had eyes for the Sox.
Paging Xander Bogaerts... A publicly-traded sports company is kind of like a Bogey monster — very rare sighting. Almost all 123 teams across the NBA, MLB, NFL, and NHL are privately held. Most have one very wealthy owner (or multiple ones). But the Sox could soon be owned by anyone with $1 to put in a brokerage account. Talks are still in early innings, though.
Going public means pulling off the cloak... of financial secrecy. When a company becomes publicly traded, it's required to file reports with the SEC detailing its financial performance (plus other juicy info). Retail investors (like us) can access these deets for decision-making purposes. If the deal goes through, Sox fan-vestors will finally get a view into the team's ballin' (or not) finances.
Twilio, the company that's secretly texting you, hits new highs on a $3B splurge
When DoorDash texts you more than your friends... Text "STOP." Cloud company Twilio helps other companies communicate with customers — think: text notifications, emails, support calls. Twilio hides personal info so you can call your delivery driver without knowing their 617 area code. You don't see Twilio, but you definitely just used it. Its customers include:
- Uber: When you rush for that "Honda Civic is 2 minutes away" text.
- Instacart: When you call your shopper to say they got the wrong almond butter.
- DoorDash: When you get the play-by-play of taco's life journey.
Nailed it... ICYMI, it's a good time to be in remote communications. Twilio stock jumped last week after the company raised its sales expectations for the quarter, and has more than tripled in value this year on continued growth.
- 200K+: How many customers Twilio had last quarter, 4X more than in 2017.
- $401M: Twilio's sales last quarter, up from $115M in the last quarter of 2017. Buuut: it's still not profitable.
- $3.2B: How much Twilio's dropping on customer data startup Segment. Twilio stock hit an all-time high on yesterday's news.
Like selling shovels in a gold rush... Companies like Shopify and Doordash are corona-conomy winners, but they're using Twilio to support their pandemic surges. That makes Twilio a winner (by the transitive property). Companies don't reinvent the wheel to build all their own tools — they tap others for help. But with great opportunity comes great competition: Microsoft just launched a calling/messaging service that competes with Twilio head-on.
What else we’re Snackin’
- Mickey: Disney says its "primary focus" for entertainment is streaming and plans a major Disney+ focused reorg of its media division.
- Chromey: Regulators are reportedly considering forcing Google to sell its Chrome browser (it's an antitrust thing).
- Book: Facebook reverses course and bans Holocaust denial content under its hate-speech policy as part of a wider moderation push.
- Green: Sony snags the #1 spot on the Wall Street Journal's list of the 100 most sustainably managed companies in the world.
- Reviewed: Yelp will begin flagging businesses accused of racist behavior in its app.
- Niet: Microsoft is trying to dismantle a huge Russian criminal bot network that it fears could freeze US voter-registration systems.
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Tuesday
- Apple's hardware event (expect the iPhone 12)
- Earnings expected from Chase, Citi, Delta, BlackRock, and Johnson & Johnson
Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Microsoft, Disney, Google, Apple, and Uber
ID: 1364760