The Best One Yet - 👙 “Airbnb for Pools” — Facebook’s “Metaverse”. Swimply’s pool play. Kim-Clark’s shrinkflation.

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

Facebook reports earnings this week, but the real story is that Zuck’s been building a Metaverse this whole time. Swimply just became the Airbnb for pools, and that’s kind of a problem for Airbnb. And toilet paper icon Kimberly-Clark reveals that we’re facing a wild new thing: Shrink-flation (it’s sneaky).$KMB $ABNB $FBGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @NickOfNewYorkWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Got a SnackFact for the pod? We got a form for that too:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe64VKtvMNDPGSncHDRF07W34cPMDO3N8Y4DpmNP_kweC58tw/viewformLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. And this is Snacks Daily. Welcome back. It is Monday, July 26th. This is our best one, yeah. Yeah, it is, Jack. Did you go to space this weekend?

No. Still on the wait list. I didn't either. I submit my email address every day hoping for that free ticket for the raffle. And the winner is Jeff again. Jeff, you won again. First story, Jack. What do we got?

Facebook is about to report their quarterly earnings. Yep. But Mark Zuckerberg just gave a pretty huge interview. This is wild. Facebook's new thing is an app. The Metaverse. For our second story, Kimberly Clark, probably manufactured the toilet paper on your role right now. New thing, though, to mess with your mind?

Shrinkflation. Third and final story, Jack. What to show off your dive, but don't have a swimming pool? I do. Introducing Swimply. 13,000 pools are on Swimply, but they're not on Airbnb. Ah. But Snackers, before we hit those three wonderful stories.

I love this mix to start that week, Jack. Introducing Horters Almanac, Week 7. Yep, Jack and I have been keeping track of all the things we're running out of because of the pandemic. For example, we ran out of fireworks. Yep, Jack looks like we ran out of Port-a-Potties 2 the other day. But good news this week, that's actually weird news. Yeah, something we're not running out of? No, we're not running out of hard seltzer at all.

In fact, we have way too much of it. Snackers, no need to hoard this stuff. There is literally plenty to the point that it's a problem. Boston Beer Company that used to be known for Sam Adams beer, but is now known for truly the number two hard seltzer brand in the country. Well, last Friday, they reported that they overestimated demand for hard seltzer. Turns out they're stuck with way too much hard seltzer at their breweries. They got all this inventory.

They don't know what to do with it. Jack, the situation's so bad. Boston beer stock literally plummeted 25% last week. If you own stock of Boston beer company, you are terrified that hard seltzer might have just been a fat. Yeah, like the lava lamps. like those Von Dutch hats, Jack. But if it was a fad, it was like three to four years strong dominating the beaches of America.

Pretty nice fad. So here's our idea for Boston Beer Company. Take all that truly. Give it away all the extra inventory to anyone over 21. Give it away for free. Make it a surplus with a purpose. It's a surplus with a purpose. You're tuned in the snacks daily.

We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. The snacks are about to hear rain food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the robber. her family. It's all informational just so. We're not recommending any securities. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security.

Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, the big earnings report that you got to care about this week, it's Facebook. But Zuck just gave us his future vision of Facebook, which like isn't actually Facebook, right, Jack? Right.

Last week, Snackers, the big Facebook news was the public fight with the President of the United States. Yeah, Biden said Facebook's misinformation was killing people. So that's a fight. This week, the news is Facebook announcing earnings on Wednesday. Yeah, Twitter and Snapchat crushed it last week. Facebook stock is already up 5% because of that. What was good for those two internet ad companies is probably going to be good for this giant

internet ad company. But over the weekend, the biggest news that Jack and I thought about Facebook was an interview that Zuckerberg did on Thursday with Casey Newton. Zuck dropped this bomb. Shocker. He said he's transitioning Facebook from a social media company to a Metaverse company. A meta what? Metaverse.

Metaverse Snackers. It was originally coined in a 1992 science fiction novel that Nick and I never read. We really didn't. But we did watch Ready Player 1, which was only two hours to watch. So this is that, but in real life, a Metaverse. We're basically like semi-quazi almost partial experts on this stuff. A metaverse is more than virtual reality because there's its own economy in a metaverse. And the way to think of this is you can do literally everything you do in the physical world without limitations in the metaverse, including with some important companies.

For example, in the current world that we know, you can connect with someone on Tinder and then meet with them in real life at a Starbucks. Lovely, Jack, that would be charming. In a metaverse, you can meet on verbalt that. virtual Tinder and then meet your date at a virtual Starbucks location. So you feel like you had the real date, but you never left home. You still got the goggles on. Similar to virtual reality. But unlike current virtual reality, this metaverse would look and feel like the actual

world that we know and love. Yeah. Unlike Fortnite, you're going to see all the brands, all the places, even your office building, even Darlene from Duncan. She'll be there. But it's not just the plain old world. No, it's not. It's more.

For example, your Starbucks drink can have a fantastic, Unicorn, jump out of the latte foam. And that becomes the conversation starter for the date, so that's where you should do the date at the virtual Starbucks. Now, the reason Zuck loves this idea is because right now, your quality of life is largely impacted by where you live. In the Metaverse, though, you can live in the paradise even if you're physically next to a railroad.

Now, that sounds like a nice concept in principle. It does. That could and likely will go terribly wrong. Honestly, I'm scared right now just thinking about it. We're going to have like 10 years of covering how it probably will go wrong. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Facebook? I'm sorry, Zach, I'm sorry, the metaverse. The metaverse.

While Zuck has been building Facebook, he's also been building out his metaverse. Yeah, simultaneously. Snackers, the Facebook app, it's really a virtual borderless nation with a population of three billion humans if you think about it. And Mark Zuckerberg is the Supreme Emperor of that borderless nation of three billion people. Instagram isn't really a photo app. It's really a virtual mall to market and help you buy anything. Zuckbox, formerly known as Libra, great name. This is a digital currency that's not in use yet, but it's still a thing and could be in this

metaverse. And Jack, Oculus, their leading virtual reality headset, that is the portal to this entire virtual metaverse they're building. It's basically the passport to get you into Zucks Metaverse. Exactly. So the metaverse that Zucks envisioning is actually the next iteration of the internet. It is Internet 3.0 brought to you by Facebook. And for the last 17 years, Facebook has low-key been building the foundation for it. For our second story, this one's kind of wild.

Kimberly Clark is the king or is it the queen of toilet paper, but it's suffering. Snackers, we need to warn you about shrinkflation. Shrinkflation, you should be on the lookout. By the way, before we do this, if you're not in your bathroom right now, which some of you may be, go to your bathroom, check your toilet paper inventory. How you do it? How's the inventory? Are you good? Honestly, Jack, we have too much. It feels like we have a forest in the cabin.

I feel guilty. You're probably good. And that situation nationwide is why Kimberly Clark's sales fell last quarter for the second quarter in a row. Yeah, you're not buying as much toilet papers last year. And these guys, they do toilet paper. You hoarded at the beginning of the pandemic, and you still have inventory from that. Classic pantry pusher. That's what Kimberly Clark is. They make Kleenex to Kotech, tissues to tampons. Kimberly Clark's costs also jumped last quarter because of inflation. So it was a double whammy that sank profits by 41%. Again, compared to last year's like epic quarter reporting where they made a lot of money on the toilet paper. Now, Kimberly Clark seeing those rising costs. It is. And they're raising prices to offset them.

Mm-hmm. Huggy's diapers going up 9%. So Jack and I noticed a fascinating trend that you kind of have to look out for and it isn't just inflation. It's shrinkflation. Shrinkflation. This is like inflation's annoying cousin. Inflation is when the prices of things across the economy are rising, which they are. Shrinkflation is like a weird inverse situation, but with the same exact effect. Instead of increasing prices, a company can shrink the size of the product. Same effect, but different. So, Jack, shrinkflation is kind of like if Christopher Nolan created inflation, this is what he would make it. Hershey's, let's say they want to increase the price of chocolate. They could increase the price, or they can do what they did instead, which is just make the bar smaller.

They shaved off two ounces, kept the same price. So that's basically inflation, but not exactly. Think about it. When you walk into the target, are you checking the size of this stuff? No, you're just checking the price. Doritos erased a half ounce of chips from their bags and charged the same price, $2.50. Because these Doritos, they're half air anyway. Now they're a little bit more air.

They're like 60% air now, not 50% air. Now, Snackers, Kimberly Clark hasn't done this. They haven't shrank the number of toilet paper rolls, tampons, or tissues from their products yet. They've just increased the prices of those products. But to experts say, once shrinkflation begins with one brand of the brands tend to copy it. And it's definitely happening with other brands. And we know when you go to a store, you're not bringing like a measuring tape with you. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Kimberly Clark?

shrinkflation is kind of dishonest, but it works. Snackers, you've been buying the same 30-pound bag. bag of dog food for years. You know it. You give Fido one pound a day and that's enough for the whole month. Well, it's July 30th. You got one day left in July. You're added dog food. That's messed up. The bag has always been good for a month until now because they shrink it a little. A more honest way to increase prices isn't shrinkflation. It's just regular inflation. Increase the prices. Yeah. If you want to increase the prices, just increase the price. Shrinkflation depends on us not noticing. Unfortunately, we're probably not going to notice.

So shrinkflation is going to work. As one business school professor put it, the one piece of numerical info that people are sensitive to is price. For our third and final story, as Americans are bracing for another heat wave, Swimply is swim in profit laps. Nick, Swimply's success is Airbnb's missed opportunity. Jack, it's a Monday.

So I don't know if we should do it like this, but should we share the bad news first? It leads to good news. The bad news, another heat dome is headed our way. Yeah, Washington Post headline Thursday, coast-to-coast heat dome to deliver sweltering weather next week. Most of the lower 48 will get temperatures 10 to 15 degrees above average for a couple weeks in a row. Good news, though. You don't have to buy a home you can't afford to get a pool because you can get a pool in a different way. Another headline from last week, this time from the Wall Street Journal.

An Airbnb for pools is making a splash this summer. Swimply. Swimply. Great name. Basically, empty nesters are sad their kids like aren't swimming in the family pool. So they're booking it out, sharing it on Swimply. Nick, you know how Portland had the hottest week imaginable this year? I think it was since the dinosaurs, like literally since the Cretaceous period. Well, one couple has a family pool not getting used. They were interviewed by the Wall Street Journal. They have booked 2,700 swimmers on Swimpley in the past year. Check, let me get the whiteboard out for us. Each of those guests is paying about 40, bucks to use the Swimply platform to get these pools. Add that all up. They've made a shocking $100,000 renting out their swimming pool on Swimply in less than a year. As in the family

has made $100,000 in less than a year. Now, I saw some pictures. This is a nice pool. Okay. Not everyone's going to make $100,000. Are they doing the donut or the flamengo? Because it's one of the pool floats. I don't know. There's an outdoor shower. Get me some sunglasses and a flamengo. I'm happy. But Snackers, we love this. because it's your classic sharing economy win-win. I mean, Jack, you got 13,000 hosts making money by sharing wonderful diving board experiences. And you got even more guests who are getting relief from a hot sunny day because they get to host a pool party for the afternoon. And then you got Swimpley, which has taken care of the insurance and because they provide the platform snagging a 25% fee.

So it's actually a win-win-win. But there's this interesting nugget. This is awkward. If you are hosting your pool out to a renter on Swimply, you can decide whether or not to include, bathroom access. It feels like a pro tip here. Let them use the bathrooms. Let them use the bathrooms. By the way, Jack, worst one minute experience in anyone's life is like getting out of the pool and walking to the bathroom. You know what I mean? I can think of worst experiences. You get very cold, though. You get very cold. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies

over at Swimply? Swimply's success is Airbnb's missed opportunity. All right, Snackers, here's how we're seeing this. There are only two things that are Airbnbable these days. One is living spaces and the other is experiences. Our 2021 predictions pod dropped on January 4th. Great episode. And we predicted that Airbnb would transform from just like a house booking platform into the sharing company. We were wishing for like an Airbnb, a boat for a bachelor party. Or Airbnb your car for the weekend because you're at a bachelor party and you don't need it this weekend. Or Airbnb a leaf blower for after the bachelor party or a guitar hero or a hot tub or like any of these amenities. Airbnb should Google the Airbnb of Blank. And whatever comes up, they should consider

building that or acquiring a company that does. But it hasn't. Instead, its stock has languished and it's down 36% from its IPO. We know because we own it. Swimply is the Airbnb of pools. Its success is Airbnb's missed opportunity. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us to start the week? Facebook's Metaverse is virtual reality, but with companies involved and profits involved. Zuck's been putting the pieces in place for the past 17 years. We didn't even know it. Kimberly Clark is engaged in inflation. They're raising prices to offset higher costs. Shrigflation, it's the same thing, but it's sneaky and messed up. Swimply is booming the past couple of years.

But Swimply's success is Airbnb's missed opportunity. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one tweeted in by Emily. Mullen from lovely Wilmet, Illinois. Right after the Civil War ended, it was estimated that one-third to one-half of all U.S. currency was counterfeit money. Up to a half of our money was fake money. So the Secret Service was established in 1865 with one primary task. Minimize this absurd level of counterfeiting. Find counterfeit money. Destroy counterfeit money. In the metaverse. Snackers, you look fantastic today. Jack, if you've got a surplice, you've got a surplice, Plus, give it some purpose.

That is a keeper of the line. And Snaggers, if you haven't yet, click to follow us right here on Spotify or Apple or Google or wherever you get your bots. Nick and I'll see you tomorrow. Can't wait, man. And before we go, Mario and Madeline Alvarito finally got married after 15 months delay.

Congratulations. Happy anniversary to Kevin and Kat Baker in Queensland, Australia. And the Stogners, they got their first wedding anniversary down in Dallas. Congrats to Nick Seibote, who got a new job for the Seattle Cee. And Dylan Steinfeld promoted at the Home Depot in hometown Atlanta.

Lewis Vasquez is back. Back into the workforce after 20 months on the sidelines. And happy anniversary to Josiah and Caitlin Freeland in Clovis, California. Happy birthday to Rebecca Zow in Brooklyn, New York. And Mallory Allen in Fawbro, California. And Mack Klinger in Winnetka, Illinois. And happy birthday, Clay Dover in Plano, Texas. And Norman Kwong in Fremont, California.

And Ian in Sink and Spring, Pennsylvania. And Nick Metcalfe in Mountain, California. And Derek Lewis in Yorktown Heights and Kingsley Chan in San Mateo, California. This is Jack. Nick and I both own stock of Airbnb. The Robin Hood Snacks podcast you just heard reflects the opinions of only the hosts who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and does not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets, Inc. or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. The podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a recommendation to buy or sell any security and is not an offer or sale of a security.

The podcast is also not a research report and is not intended to serve as the basis of any investment decision. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. You get very cold.