Hey Snackers,
"Underwhelming." How Nestlé described demand for its low-sugar chocolate bar, Milkybar Wowsomes — it was (Nes)quickly taken out of production.
Markets dipped on word of a spike in deadly coronavirus cases.
Time to get money... Tesla's stock has been having a moment — its market cap is now $144B, worth nearly double Ford and GM's combined $83B value. Now, Tesla is cashing in by issuing $2B worth of new stock — 2 weeks after Elon said raising money "doesn't make sense." Tesla stock dipped at first (because new shares dilute the value of existing shares), but quickly bounced back.
Unusual move for a large, public company... but it makes sense. That's because swings in a stock price don't directly affect the company -— A Tesla stock surge doesn't influence its bottom line. Unless the company decides to issue and sell new shares:
Tesla shares are kind of like second-hand Gucci bags... Gucci only makes money off the initial purchase — not when the original buyer sells the special edition purse for a higher price years later. Neither do publicly-traded companies when you sell their shares. But by offering new shares to the public, Tesla can raise cash to fund its projects, like the 4th Gigafactory that's currently finding space in a forest near Berlin.
The classic Heinz ketchup bottle... hasn't changed much during the company's 151-year history. Condiment legend Heinz merged with mac-n-cheese icon Kraft back in 2015 to form Kraft Heinz. The food giant's latest 5% drop in quarterly sales knocked shares down 8% Thursday — probably a result of Kraft's lack of healthy food options:
Kraft's labels are in pain... The company had to write down the value of its old-school brands by $15B last year — just yesterday, Kraft Heinz announced that Maxwell House coffee is worth $213M less than you thought. Add that all up and Kraft Heinz's stock has plunged over 70% in the past 3 years, and 40% in the past year alone.
Kraft needs to ketchup to the times... because it's getting left behind by its rivals. Its sugary Big Food peers have been busy acquiring cool, health-centric startups — without having to innovate themselves:
Not so fast... Microsoft scored a huge win by snagging the Pentagon's $10B cloud computing contract (aka the "JEDI" deal) back in October. Cloud-competitor Amazon wasn't so pleased, so it appealed the decision in December. Now, a federal judge ordered a temporary block on JEDI in response to Amazon's lawsuit.
The DoD is America's largest employer... That means big data. And big data means big cloud cash — cash that's now on the line because of this temporary block. If the judge decides the DoD needs to reconsider its decision, Microsoft could lose the biggest cloud contract in US history.
Cloud is the new oil... Like oil back when everything in the economy needed to be shipped and delivered in trucks, today's economy runs on cloud computing — Companies are moving to cloud providers to store their data and manage their biz apps, instead of doing it themselves. Now cloud leaders like Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM are increasingly fighting over these big cloud deals.
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Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Amazon
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