Hey Snackers,
The Snuggie (2009). The RompHim (2017). The beach blazer (now a thing). The jacket/towel combo almost distracted Wall Street from trade war drama Wednesday.
Stocks barely budged yesterday as investors awaited today's US and Chinese trade negotiation (it's still on).
Above the fold news: Profits for the Times... The New York Times' quarterly earnings were politely reported in a totally fair way by crosstown WSJ. Profits rose 38% to $30M, driven by higher subscription revenue and... rental income from its giant headquarters building. When people are getting news from Facebook, you make money where you can.
User metrics matter... 500K people pay NYT for just its crossword puzzles and cooking recipes. But NYT is a news institution, so let's look at how many humans get all the news that's fit to print:
What's black and white and dead all over... The Times' newspaper. Emphasis on "paper." Revenues for digital advertising rose 19%, while ads on huge fold-out pages fell 12%. And it's spending a lot to continue printing those for a declining userbase. Maybe it's for symbolic/historic value — our grandkids should experience a lovely morning stroll through the Sunday Times in its original, unpleasant newsprint paper form.
Wasn't meant to be... Stamps.com dropped 45% after cutting its profit forecasts for the rest of the year by nearly half. Blame it on the big breakup between Stamps and the US Postal Service. News of the two moving on from each other was revealed in February, but now we know the financial fallout. It's big.
Wasn't meant to be... Stamps committed to an exclusive relationship with USPS back in 1996 to let you print postage at home with its software. It was good while it was good. But Amazon's 2-day shipping makes USPS 3-7 days look bad. Stamps apparently asked USPS to be more competitive, but USPS wasn't up for it. So Stamps wants to see other people. Here's how it will rebound:
The real victims here are FedEx/UPS/DHL... Stamps ended things with USPS because Amazon is making moves to become the future of delivery. Jeff Bezos' monster ecommerce platform is leasing 50 cargo jets right now (expected to hit 100) and has capacity for 10,000 branded tractor-trailers. Stamps' affection reveals Amazon's ambitions.
Roku embraces the little guy mentality... It literally subleases office space from Netflix. But it tossed up big numbers Wednesday, with revenues up 51% and the number of active Roku customers jumping 40% from last year to 29M. The best part — The CFO welcomed Disney and others to video streaming: "When they win, we win."
Cord-cutters print money... Roku's direct competitors are Apple TV, Amazon Fire Stick, and Google Chromecast. Those all make TVs smart and streamable. Here's how Roku makes bank:
Roku owns top real estate: Your TV... Americans spend a shocking 4 hours a day watching live TV. Anything that gets more people cord-cutting helps Roku shift that time from live TV to Roku TV that it can monetize. When Disney+ rolls out this fall with classics, Star Wars, Fox, and Marvel for $6.99/month, it could crank cord-cutting up a notch.
Disclosure: An author of this Snacks owns shares of Amazon and Roku