Monday Oct.14, 2019

Facebook's 1st big ZuckBucks meeting

"_Train for next Facebook crypto meeting, you must_"

Hey Snackers,

We now know the top 10 most popular emoji ever. The first 5 capture Wall Street right now.

After 12 meetings, the US and China agreed to phase 1 of a larger trade deal (pretty much the appetizer — entrees and desserts are still to be fought out). Stocks jumped Friday as the US will cancel tariff increases planned for this week, while China will buy more US agricultural goodies.

Anti-social

It's crypto and political season for Facebook — both make the 'Book look bad

Please RSVP no later than Friday... Visa, eBay, Mastercard, and Stripe all sent their regrets to Facebook's inaugural meeting in Geneva today about the global cryptocurrency (it's very jedi council-y). PayPal ditched a week before. Now the "Libra" project is raising questions from the business partners who would've governed its dollars without borders. Next, Zuckerberg chats with Congress about it this month.

Add ad problems to the crypto problems... 2020 could be worse than 2016. Zuck decided this past week that political ads won't be subject to fact-checks like other content — he thinks people should decide themselves. Then this happened:

On the right: President Trump paid Facebook for a campaign ad that included false statements. CNN isn't airing it — Facebook and other networks are.
On the left: Elizabeth Warren falsely claimed in an ad that Zuck endorsed Trump for president — just to troll him/prove a point.
Across the spectrum: Both ads got approved, showing FB's political ad revenue will be salt-and-peppered with instense controversy.

Politics haven't bruised profits... Just look at these slides from Facebook's last earnings report. The graphs still point up and to the right. It paid a $5B fine for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but investors who friended Facebook at its IPO have watched its value rise from $100B then to over $500B today (and it's the #5 biggest public company on Earth). Unless the next prez breaks Facebook up, it'll keep selling more ads for higher prices in your FB/Insta/Whatsapp feeds.

Highs

Who's up...

Carb battles... Domino's is stuck in two food-armed conflicts: the Pizza Wars and the Delivery Wars. Rival Papa John's stock is up 35% this year, while Uber Eats steals more of Dom's delivery market. But Domino's shares rebounded last week as its new CEO focuses on a secret weapon — takeout. He mentioned "carryout" 17 times on the earnings call, since it makes up 40% of Dom's sales and is more profitable because it doesn't require paying a delivery guy.

If you can't beat 'em... hire their best person. Target's stock is up 80% in the last 5 years, while Bed Bath & Beyond's is down the same amount. So the bathroom go-to is snagging Target's Chief Merchandising Officer to be its new CEO. Bed Bath shares surged 21% on word offline retail legend Mark Tritton will bring his Target gameplan with him: He launched 30 new brands that looked just like Millennial startups you want to try out, but they were actually owned by Target.

Lows

...and who's down

Tattoos only get you so far... Harley's core customer sticks its logo on their biceps, but sales have shrunk in the US each year since 2014. So Harley sliced some avocado and released a $30K electric bike this year called "LiveWire". But Reuters research revealed that pre-orders are low and mainly going to existing customers — the “young, green, affluent 1st-time motorcyclists" Harley was targetting don't really exist (and you could almost get a whole Tesla for that price instead).

Because, profits... Walmart spent years investing in innovative ecommerce to take on Amazon: it spent $3.3B on Jet.com in 2016 and acquired khaki king Bonobos a year later. Now it's trying to refund those unprofitable pursuits. Walmart's seeking outside investors for its private concierge app JetBlack that loses $15K per customer, it's firing dozens of Bonobos employees, and just sold its femme online clothing brand ModCloth. Old school Walmartians won't waste time on these unprofitables.

What else we’re Snackin’

Work: How to answer 5 common interview questions designed to trip you up — "tell us about a time when..."
Life: 26 of the greatest product fails of all time (ESPN cell phone? Really?)
Money: The Bloomberg chart that ranks everyone (including you) by net worth
Venture: Venture Capitalists on how to get into Venture Capital
Crypto: The IRS issues its 1st cryptocurrency tax guidance in 5 years

This Week

Monday: Bond markets are closed for the holiday, but stock markets and Snacks are open for business
Tuesday: The 3rd quarter earnings season kicks off with a bunch of banks: JPMorgan, Citi, Wells Fargo, Charles Schwab
Wednesday: Earnings from Netflix, Bank of America, IBM, Comerica
Thursday: Earnings from Morgan Stanley, ETrade, Honeywell
Friday: Earnings from Coca-Cola, American Express

Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own stock of Amazon

ID: 980407

Latest Stories

Quitting time

Huge week in tech has market bouncing back

Yikes

Feds launch new probe of Tesla recall

Alphabet’s record Q1

Search and Cloud continue to deliver, as Alphabet announces its first-ever dividend

William Coulman, David Crowther8h

America’s birth rate keeps dropping

Births in the US, like almost everywhere else, are on the decline

Millie Giles, David Crowther9h

Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, is struggling

William Coulman, David Crowther9h

Tangential remarks

Nicolai Tangen, the CEO who holds the purse strings of Norway’s $1.6 trillion sovereign wealth fund, thinks that his fellow Europeans don’t quite stack up to US employees when it comes to pure hustle, telling the Financial Times in a recent interview that there is a difference in “the general level of ambition” and that “the Americans just work harder”.

Tangen has clearly been putting his money — or more specifically Norway’s — where his mouth is: the sprawling Norwegian oil fund, now one of the largest investors on the planet, has been pumping more capital into its US holdings in the past decade, while decreasing its investment into European entities.

The troublesome news for our European readers? Tangen might be onto something. According to data from the OECD, American workers are putting in almost 60 hours a year more than the weighted average for OECD nations… a benchmark that workers from countries in the European Union are already ~180 hours shy of.

Europeans ‘less hard-working’ than Americans | FT

Rani Molla

10h

$2T is the new $1T

Alphabet’s phenomenal earnings yesterday was enough to push the search giant’s market cap beyond $2 trillion, joining the likes of NVIDIA, Apple, and Microsoft.

Air taxi Blade is actually an organ transport business in disguise

How the helicopter fleet quietly became America's biggest airborne ambulance.

Jack Raines11h

15h

NBA TV rights are finally up for grabs — with cable and streaming giants battling for the top spot

Nia Warfield

Read

15h

Southwest nurses its wounds as airlines continue to feel the Boeing sting

Max Knoblauch

Read

Friday, Apr 26th

16h

What’s happening

Pop Quiz!

Sales of what are up 136% since 2019?

Don't be a sucka

$70B

Alphabet shares are soaring in the after-market session, with a initial jump of more than 10% implying a gain of upwards of about $200B in market value when the stock opens tomorrow morning.

Google’s parent company crushed earnings expectations, initiated a cash dividend for the first time, and authorized a fresh $70B in share repurchases for good measure. The market likes it very much.

What’s up doc?

4/25/24

HOP TO IT

Joshua Topolsky

We get results!

4/25/24

This earnings season is fully operational

Balancing Act

4/25/24

Acrobatic Accounting

So, you want to join the circus?

Megan DeMatteo

Rani Molla

4/25/24

No, Apple hasn’t cut its Vision Pro production estimates in half

Quite a few news outlets are reporting that Apple thinks it’s only going to sell 400,000 to 450,000 Vision Pros in 2024, compared a “market consensus” of 700,000 to 800,000. They’re all citing a note from Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

Obviously there’s no question that Apple’s $3,500 face computer will have a limited audience and could be a huge flop, but this also doesn’t seem like accurate news.

The issue is that 1) this 400,000 number isn’t new. Back in July of 2023, the Financial Times reported that Apple planned to make fewer than 400,000 units in 2024, reducing its initial projections of 1M units, citing two people close to Apple and, the Chinese contract manufacturer assembling the device. 2) It's unclear who was estimating 700,000-800,000 Vision Pros in the first place, but it appears that it was Ming-Chi Kuo himself?