The Best One Yet - BONUS: “Best of 2020 Album” — Our 3 favorite stories from the worst year yet.

Episode Date: December 21, 2020

A special podcast: We whipped up ours and your 3 favorite stories from the last year.Got a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @TBOYJack @NickOfNewYorkWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Learn 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 your Best of Snacks album, Snacks Daily, Monday, December 21st. This is our first ever best of album. It was fantastic. I mean, Snackers, you tweeted us some of your favorite stories from 2020. We loved it. There were too many to choose from, so Nick and I had to pick our three favorite Snacks Daily stories of this year.

Jack, what are we got in here? We got like a little bit of tech, a little bit of media. Throwing the side of unlimited free breadsticks. Jack, because technically each of these stories was in a best one yet, This one has to be the best one yet? T-B-B-B-O-O-Y-Y. Jack, first story and the date of that first story. What do we got?

Tesla is a young avocado tree. Love that story back from February 5th. I felt like that story was really true. That was true. Second story, Jack, what was our second favorite story? Gone in 60 Quibbys. That one, a legend. We dissected Quibi back on October 23rd.

More of an autopsy, actually. And our third and final story, Olive Garden has a single Neobie. This one never gets old. Jack loved it from back on April 8th, 2020. But Snackers, before we hit those three fantastic reruns, long year for all of us. Yeah, honestly, long year for us. Fun year for Ben the Bitcoin, Jack. Ben got huge this year. Ben. Easy on the NO explode. Wild year, by the way, for Darlene, they bring in the big guns when you want two pumps of hazelnut in your lodge regular. Dahlin, this guy wants two pumps.

Duncan went private this year. So it's a sumo stock again, but that also means that Darlene has become an adjusted millionaire. So we found out that she tried to buy a mattress because, you know, mattress, mattress, mattress, things went downhill from there. She went with the king-size, Nick,

because Darlene's husband weighs like half a lift. But Snackers, here's the issue. Since purple mattresses sucked Casper's promo code, the only place where the king-size inventory is in Chicago. Thank goodness, because fortunately, Chicago does logistics. So we know what you're thinking. How did Jack and I know all this? Easy. PFWTM.

Again, thank goodness. So we're whipping up our three favorite stories from 2020. That's what today's pod is Snackers. The best ones yet from the worst year yet. It's basically best of snacks. Consider our greatest hits of 2020. It's free to listen to because don't worry, Jack and I already paid for the guac, of course. And remember, if you see Zucking, say Zuck. Let's hit our three favorites. You're tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. The snacks about the hair ain't food is air candy.

They don't reflect the views of the Robberhood 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 favorite story of 2020, Tesla is like a young avocado. tree. This is from February 5th, 2020. For our first story, Tesla stock continues an insane rally because investors think it's an avocado tree. Increaseum stockium. We don't know. It's like magic that's going on here. This is a cultural phenomenon. People are talking Tesla, Tesla, Tesla. Snackers, Tesla stock is up 60% in the past week. It rose 19% on Monday and then people are like, oh, it's going to chill. It rose 14% on Tuesday. Thanks to those stock price increases, the total value of Tesla. stock, which is called the market cap, has increased by $62 billion in just the past week.

In just the last week, Tesla's value increased by the same amount as 4.3 lifts. Increase em, stockium. It just added four lifts worth of value to its company. Jack, I'm going to take this camera and zoom out a little bit over here. In the last month, Tesla has doubled in stock price. I think it's tripled in the past like three months. Hey, Snackers, have we slowed down our voices enough? and emphasized numbers enough to hit this home. What's happening with Tesla stock is ludicrous.

This is insane. Now, there are a lot of positive reasons why this could be happening that we've seen happen over the last month. First, investment banks have analysts whose job it is to predict where the stock will be in 12 months, and a lot of them have upgraded their target stock price for Tesla. So Tesla stock price has increased meeting some of those analyst estimates. Now, there's also battery news. You know Tesla's big in the battery industry.

Yeah, they got like some good relationship. They have a partnership with Panasonic, which just announced two days ago that its partnership with Tesla is already surprisingly generating profits. And then remember just last month, Tesla announced earnings. What did they deliver, Jack? A surprise profit. For the second straight time. All right. So those are like the pos of things.

Also, Elon must drop like a electronic dance music track this week, which was kind of a big deal. We're looking at all this news and we think, you know what? It leads to an obvious conclusion. Yeah, what are you thinking? Tesla is a young avocado tree. We know, Snackers, you were probably thinking the same exact thing. It almost goes without saying. And you know what?

General Motors and Ford, those are both mature borderline over the hill orange trees. All right, so here's how this goes down. General Motors and Ford, they produce 39 times as many cars as Tesla did last year. And yet, Tesla's value is more than double Ford and General Motors combined value. If so facto, Tesla is a young avocado tree. Let's explain. So Tesla's not producing that many avocados yet. No, they're barely a baby avocado.

The tree's like six feet tall. You can pluck them all in just like a few minutes. The pit to fruit ratio is very high. But this tree is young. And investors think in the future, this thing's going to keep growing. Someday it's going to be like as big as your house producing a ton of Tesla avocados. And investors, no, there is a lot of demand on a lot of toasts for a lot of avocados in the future. All right.

Now, let's look at GM and Ford. Those two are mature, older orange trees. Snackers, when was the last time you had a glass of orange juice? Jack and I were chatting about this? I think the last time my mom handed me the glass. Oranges aren't that in. They're very sweet. There's a lot of natural sugar, but I feel like I have to brush my teeth after oranges.

Remember there's a lot of pulp going on? You get the no pulp, but then it was like too much for your face. So even though oranges aren't that in these days, GM and Ford are mature orange tree of producing a ton of oranges. Yeah. They're over 100 years old, basically. They're not expected to grow that much more, but they're still producing these fruit. So these giant orange trees are producing a ton of fruit, but they're expected to decline over the

years. And plus, oranges aren't that in these days. So Jack and I are staring at this avocado tree orange tree situation and we're kind of blown away by how accurate it was. But then we were like, oh my God, this works on a climate change level too. Yeah. Let's make this analogy a little perfect. Climate change could hurt orange production because orange trees are just like, wow, it's really hot. I can't pump out for it right now. I am sweating. GM and Ford could struggle in the era of climate change because of their gas goes less. Meanwhile, avocados are like, oh my God, this warm weather, very conducive to most. more of me. Tesla is going to do well in the era of climate change. By way, we're about to get a

seasoned dissist letter from the state of Florida, Jack. Now, investors are thinking, do I want a young avocado tree in Tesla or an old orange tree and General Motors are Ford? Oh, one second. I think that's the Tropicana lawyers calling us. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over a Tesla? This could be a short squeeze. Snackers, that could be a key reason why you've seen the stock suddenly jump a short squeeze. Tesla is one of the most hated companies there is. It's true. There are thousands of investors who have made bets that Tesla's stock will fall. And these investors are short investors. When you typically buy a stock, you're a long investor. You're waiting for the stock price to increase so you can sell it at a higher price. But a short investor

sells the stock high by borrowing it and then hopes that the stock price falls. They are doing the opposite of what a typical investor is doing. Now, as Tesla's stock price has increased, those short investors have been losing a ton of money and freaking out. Right, because they're like, hey, we wanted the stock to fall, not increase. And so as the price has been increasing, they have to actually buy Tesla stock to end their bleeding and close out their position. So as Tesla stock starts rising, then these short sellers end up buying the stock back. Which causes the stock to rise even more.

Which makes an entire squeeze situation where you see the stock suddenly jump. Kind of like what you've been seeing. And then more and more short investors keep buying and buying Tesla stock to end their position. It's called a short squeeze. It causes the stock price to move an insane amount upward. And we've seen it happen with other companies. It's happened, for example, with GoPro. People thought that the stock would drop.

Short sellers sold off the stock, but then they had to buy it back really quickly. We saw it happen last year with Beyond Meek. Sometimes these inexplicable stock price increases are the result of a short squeeze. For our second favorite story of 2020, gone in 60 Quibbys. This is from October 23, 2020. For our first story, Quibi is sadly shutting down after just six months. In about the length of a single Quibi episode, Quibi is now no more. Quibi, short for Quickbytes, sounds like a flavor of gummy.

Jack, break it down, what is the quibby? As a reminder to the Snackers, they were offering HBO quality content, chopped into Quickbytes for people with short attention spans. We're talking mobile only $5 or $8 a month. Jack's already using the past tense. He's already getting headed again. Now, they call the HBO quality content. we're thinking it was Hulu quality content at best.

Yep, but still was mobile only and you were forbidden. Couldn't even ask. Don't even think about putting this on your TV. And it was designed for in-between moments. Each episode was like 8 to 10 minutes. You're on the subway commute. You're between 42nd and 59th Street. You're going to pop in an episode.

Maybe you're waiting in line in the grocery store. And the who of this story is the one that got all the attention because we're talking Jeffrey Katzenberg. The guy who invented the Shrek. He was teaming up with me. Meg Whitman of HP quality fame, you can thank your printer for her. She also was the first CEO of eBay, I think, and also it's not the Shrek, it's just Shrek. My bad on that. It could be the Shrek. It could be a verb at this point. But together, this pair raised $2 billion, $2 billion, a quarter of a lift

before Quibi had even launched. That's right. There was no Quibi in the app store, and they already had $2 billion almost from investors. So Quibi launches in April of this year, goes with the extremely absurdly generous three-month free trial. No, please have another sample. And then we got the numbers. Yeah, so Quibi's like bragging about three and a half million subscribers, but they were free subscribers. It was in July. Yep, that we saw who really wanted to stick with Quibi. A data processing firm let us know that it turns out 90% of all those users from the first three months, they ended up quitting as soon as they had to pay for the first time. Full disclosure, I'm one of those Quibi people who defected when I actually had to pay for it. Jack, I got to come clean here. I am also one of those defectors of July. Nick, I watched one episode, and it was okay. I just wasn't compelled to ever return to the act. I hear you that Jennifer

Lopez giving away a lot of money. I got through two episodes. It was charming, but I didn't end up becoming a hardcore. Seems though, Nick's in my experiences wasn't atypical, because in September, we heard rumblings that Jeffrey Katzenberg was going to L.A. and like trying to sell the company. Katsenberg pulled up in the Uber Black, went to Apple, went to Disney, went to Facebook, went to NBC, and all of them passed on buying Quibi's content last month, which brings us to last night. After Nick and I just finished the Snags Daily recording that came out yesterday, it was a great recording. That was the great one. We see news that Quibi posted an open letter saying what's going on with their future. The main note of this letter, Quibi is calling it quits. They're not trying

to merge anymore. They're not trying to sell to another company. They're going to shut down the app. They are. They've got $350 million left, and very nobly, they're actually going to return that money to shareholders, which is a great move. They're not going to like pull an Adam Newman and like host a company party on Hawaii for a month. Vegas, Quibi team, ASAP. In the letter announcing that they're shutting down, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman gave two big reasons for the failure of Quibi. The first issue was timing and the second issue was the idea itself. All right. Let's address case number one timing. And look, it launched on April 6th, 2020, mid-early pandemic. Yeah, you're not on that for a train going from 42nd to 59th Street. And you're not having the in-between moments where you're

waiting for a friend at the restaurant, probably Timmy running late. People were sitting at home streaming, and the usage on mobile video apps peaked to a record high during the pandemic. It just wasn't quibby. Yeah, there was actually more consumption and demand for content than there's probably ever been in history. All right. Now, another timing issue with cribby, they had lots of competition. They jumped into the market just as Apple TV Plus, Peacock and HBO Max were launching too. But as, Jack and I have mentioned in a takeaway on Quibi many moons ago, the real competition for them wasn't other streaming apps. It was social media apps. Snapchat just had one of their best quarters ever

during the pandemic. You don't hear them complaining about timing. No, oh, and TikTok wasn't really a thing last year, kind of a thing this year, even though you're at home. Once again, we think the real competition for Quibi was social media apps, which are doing really well. But as for Meg and Jeff's second point about the idea not being strong enough, feels like we should address that one with Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Quibi? Quibi's idea did make sense. It's execution didn't make sense. Snackers, content is still king, and Meg Whitman and Jeff Katzenberg did market it as HBO quality content, which it kind of wasn't. Exhibit A, the show about a lady obsessed with a golden arm. Did you hear your buddies saying, you got to watch that on Quibby?

Check it out. It's got the lady from Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, who's fantastic in kind of a B-weight role for her, where she has a golden arm that she's obsessed with. The show, The show didn't catch on, and it actually turns out, according to reports, many of the shows that made it to Quibi, they were leftovers that Netflix and HBO had passed on. But the other key that Jack and I have noticed is that Quibi was so focused on mobile only that it actually became an anti-social app. Screenshodding of the Quibi app was banned. No.

There were no social buttons to share with your friends. You can't do it. And even when you were sitting at home for the whole month of April, you weren't allowed to cast what was on your phone to your huge. huge TV that was sitting right in front of you. Oh, and by the way, if you open the app, there were no memes, no trending hashtags, and no TikTok-style discovery to find out what other shows you should watch. The last sentence of Quibi's obituary on Snacks Daily. Quality mobile first streaming video was an idea that made sense. Those mistakes, they didn't. For our third

and final favorite story of 2020, Olive Garden has a single Yoki problem. It's from April 8th, 2020 hasn't expired yet. For our first story, Jack, smother me and Carbonaro over there. The Olive Garden just gave an update about its sales numbers. The OG Lounge is going to extremes to survive. Now, the thing Jack and I want to point out here first before we jump into anything in Olive Garden is that every company should be updating their catchphrases right now for the next three months.

When you're not here, you're still family. When you're here, you should. You shouldn't be here. You really shouldn't be here. Unlimited socially distanced breadsticks for 599. You order the Olive Garden Sicilian spaghetti. You get a bunch of strands spaced six feet apart. You order the noki, it's just a single noki on the plate. They quarantined the noki for you in the takeout. Darden restaurants did experiential branding before millennials were even a thing. We're talking about the restaurant group that owns companies like Bahama Breeze, whose restaurants made you feel like spring break 96 back in 2005. And capital,

Grill, which makes you splurge on dessert because you're expensing this to your CFO's account. If you're at a Capitol Grill, you feel like everyone with you is a CFO. And the Olive Garden, where I worked for five glorious months, which makes you feel like you're in Tuscanay without needing a passport. Snackers, no one can whip off the top of a Kianti like this guy over here. Can I just, I just want to give you full credit for that, Jack. You've got your seamless. I used to torch my own creme brulees. Let's just leave it at that. That's a French thing, not an Italian one. Now, Darden restaurants, is interestingly now 1,500 restaurants in that mega chain. Hold on. I hate tweeting Olive Garden right now for serving creme brulee and lying to me for five months.

And the stock has lost half of its value this year. So the Olive Garden gave us all an update because we're all probably concerned with how the Olive Garden is doing. If you're a shareholder, you're like, hey, oh, gee, you okay? And they're like, we're still here. Blink twice if you're still alive. Well, they decided to jump up and a wink three times. Their sales so far this quarter have plummeted 39% and this quarter hasn't ended yet.

That was for Darden restaurants, the whole restaurant group. For Olive Garden in particular, sales have plummeted by 71%, 64% and 60% in the last three weeks. It's like the country's on a nationwide Atkins diet. You can't even find a carb right now. That's because in mid-March, Darden made the decision to close all dining rooms. Nobody can dine in anymore. Now, Darden closed 100% of its dining rooms, but an interesting thing we noticed, they've kept open 99% of the locations for takeout.

In fact, Olive Garden's takeout sales have more than doubled from 16 million a week back in February to 40 million per week last week. As a result, when Darden made this, hey, we're still here announcement yesterday, the stock jumped 12% on the delicious update. Also, to sue the investors concerned, they bragged that they have a billion dollars in their bank account, and executives are taking a 50% pay cut to make sure that we can weather the storm. That is just a classy move. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Olive Garden? The future of restaurants is copying retail.

It's all about Omni Channel sales. Snackers, throw this one up on a T-shirt, Omni-Channel. It's the ability to nimbly sell to your customers, both online and offline simultaneously seamlessly. Under relentless pressure from Amazon and online commerce, retailers like J-Crew and Target have upped their Omni-Channel game. You'll walk into J-Crew, you're looking for the 4-8-4 khakis in Mediterranean Blue. They're out of that style, they ID a store nearby, and then boom, they order them online for you free delivery.

Or you're obsessively searching for the perfect dog crate for your new puppy. It's a journey. And you find one at Target and you order it for curbside pickup so you can get it on the way home. The corona economy is showing restaurants that they must have this type of online, offline flexibility. You must nimbly jump from in person to in restaurant to online to take out to delivery. And remember, when you're here, you shouldn't be here. Jack, can you actually don't even bother whipping up the takeaways. They speak for themselves. They know the takeaways. So Jack, time for our snack fact of the day. This one tweeted in by a fantastic

combination, a father-son team, Rob Ayuso and Rob Ayuso Jr. from lovely Pennsylvania. One works at Stoufers, which is owned by Nestle. Yeah. The other works at Hershey's, which is owned by Hershey's. Classic awkward Thanksgiving situation. So we got a father and son at competing cookie companies. A lot of biscuit issues. Who's got the best chocolate? in town, I think they should arm wrestle to decide. This is an intense one. So Hershey's, it turns out, is making 70 million kisses a year, the famous Hershey's kisses. But no one knows how Hershey's kish is actually got their name. It's wild. No one knows. It's a big corporate mystery. However, Hershey's also is famous for their nut bars. They are so famous for their nut bars that they have

become the largest purchaser of almonds in North America. Feels like Hershey's is kind of beating Stoufers in this snack fact situation. I do feel like we need a second snack fact from the stover side of things. I think we can wait for that one. Snackers, send us one in 2021. We are off this week. Spending some time with our families. We will be back again on Monday, reviewing the top three business trends of 2020 with another special snacks. Snackers, we're going to miss you every day this week. But in the meantime, have a fantastic Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. And before we go, Snackers, big congrats to Joey Cracker. Got the John promotion over in Milwaukee. And congrats to Taylor Worthington. Great name,

great new job in Kansas. And Bryce Hoffman, congrats on the NBA graduation down in Texas. And happy birthday to Hunter Robinson in Vancouver, Canada. And Samir Singh in San Diego. And Cowie in Miami. And Tyler in Richmond Hill, Canada. And happy birthday, Jake Adams in Nashville, Tennessee. And Enrique Castro in Houston, Texas.

And Catherine Sodwettle in Tagard, Oregon. This is Jack. Nick owns stock in Apple. I own stock in Amazon and Peloton. And I own Crocs. The shoes, not the stock. 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. Thank you.