The Best One Yet - 🚀 “Does Fiji Water freeze in space?” — Virgin Galactic’s 28% surge. Modern Fertility’s stickiness. App Store vs. Fortnite.

Episode Date: May 25, 2021

Virgin Galactic shares jumped after the space company’s successful test flight. Modern Fertility was acquired by Ro because FemTech could foster a 2nd economic revolution. And the judge kinda showed her cards in the final day of Apple court drama against Fortnite over the “App Tax”.$SPCE $AAPLGot 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. It is Tuesday, May 25th. Like one T-Boy tea bone served medium-repleas. We can do that. We can do that here. The best one yet, Jack.

What's our first story today? Virgin Galactic Stock searched 28% yesterday on a successful test flight to space and back to Earth. All right, Jack, so we got successful. Safe, human trial with no complications. This doesn't sound like a space thing. Sounds like a Pfizer report. Rocket companies starting to look a whole lot more like drug companies. The high drama court case between.

Apple and Fortnite, closing arguments for yesterday. Wild store here. App Store, it is bigger than PepsiCo, like the company PepsiCo. For our third and final story, modern fertility just got acquired in one of the biggest Femtech deals we've ever seen. All right, here's what we're thinking, Snackers. Fertility apps, they could be family and economic stimulus. Three great stories, but before we hit that. Wonderful, mix. Let me just quote something. Man dies after medical incident during police interaction. That's it. That's a police report headline. That was it. It's the one described the death of an unnamed man on May 25th, 2021 year ago. If you jump in further, it's 245 words long and pretty generic.

Now, the police report didn't mention a name, which was George Floyd. Or provide some crucial details about that incident. Like that, a police officer's knee was pinned to his neck for over nine minutes. There is only one reason. We know those crucial details that we know today. Yeah, honestly, check it. Thanks to that bystander video, which showed the truth that George Floyd was murdered one year ago today.

Snackers, on Sunday, members of George Floyd's family and civil rights leaders led marches in Minneapolis to commemorate his death. So they started from the courthouse where police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder. Today, George Floyd's family visits the White House to speak with the president. Okay, so Jack, can you read that headline one more time for us? Man dies after medical incident during police interaction. Okay, so much, so wrong with that one headline from a year ago. One year later, we can rewrite that initial mislead.

a word help. Here we go, Jack. George Floyd, murdered by police officer in Minneapolis, kicking off global movement of racial justice. Let's enter three stories. 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 to hear ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the robberhood family. It's all informational just so. You know, we're not recommending any securities. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale. about security. Right.

Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, Virgin Galactic, just searched 28% on hitting a major milestone moment check.

The business model is both remarkably ordinary and incredibly dangerous and exciting. Now, over the weekend, I got to say, Jack, we never get this. This is rare. This is elusive.

This is the white rhino. The Saturday press release. Peter, how you doing? I'm going to have to if you come in on Saturday. Bad issue of press release, and it's going to say this. Virgin Galactic completes first human space flight. Okay, that is a legitimate, Jack.

I'm going to interrupt your weekend to text you press release. But first of all, let's give the great state of New Mexico a little bit of congratulations here. After this weekend's launch, they're the third American state to send humans into space. After Florida, that's the easy one, and California. Interesting. I didn't see that one coming. Now, two ships were involved. First was the VMS Eve, owned by Virgin,

Galactic. It took off from an airport very much like a normal airplane. Started going fast. Eventually, it got off the air. But under its wings, it was carrying another aircraft. With a couple of humans in that one, too. And that one was called the VSS unity. Together, these two aircraft went higher and higher and higher and higher and higher and higher, kind of like your normal Delta 7.47 flight. And then they went higher and higher and higher and released the unity. It got to fly off on its own. Yeah. Okay. So we're well past the normal Delta flight at this point because The smaller Unity aircraft, after getting released from the bigger aircraft, that's when they

turned on their rockets and started soaring straight up into space. And that's when they achieved a speed of Mach 3, aka 3 times the speed of sound. And then they went higher and higher and finally reached a space altitude of 55.45 miles off this is your pilot speaking air. We've now pushed a cruising altitude of a billion miles up. Okay. So at that point, they were literally in. space. They were 55 miles up and they enjoyed several minutes of no gravity weightlessness.

And here's what you're seeing. You're seeing a bright, blue-rimmed curvature of the earth against the blackness of space. Those are their words, actually. Those are the words of the, I don't know what they called them astronauts or pilots. And then it was anticlimactic after that because they glided back down with the help of gravity and landed basically like jet blue. When it comes to rocket ship landings, anticlimactic is good. Now, the press release was impressive. But what Jack and I find more important to hear was this specific part of the press release. The pilots experience today gives our future astronaut customers a glimpse of what lies ahead at Virgin Galactic. And that part's key because Virgin Galactic is a B to C, a business to consumer, business, space tourism.

More specifically, space hospitality. Yeah, it's like Royal Caribbean. It takes off from one place, it travels, and then it returns to that same place. You've heard of, I'll get you from A to B. This gets you from A back eventually to A. It does. You're going to end up. back in a day. And again, that's a good thing. Because in the space tourism race, you got a couple

players here, and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic is just one of them. Yes. The other is Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. Those are the two companies trying to bring tourists to space. And Blue Origin, I mean, Jack, can we call them the winner here in this case? Well, they could be the winner if they launch as scheduled on July 20th with their first commercial passenger because they have one seat that they're auctioning off to the highest bidder. One seat. Rumored to be going for a cool three million dollars in the bidding process right now. I think it's going to be flavor of flage. Virgin, on the other hand, is hoping to sell seats at $250,000 each by next year. So it's more of the Delta Comfort Plus than the business class of Blue Origin. But again, it looks like Virgin's going to be

a year behind Blue Origin if Blue Origin launches as planned on July 20th. For people who bought everything money can buy, here's a new thing money can buy. Oh, by the way, tickets, they include three days of training because they're not just going to send you up with like the Delta Wings pin on your shirt. is feed you water, freeze in space. So what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Virgin Galactic? Space is a life and death business, like pharmaceuticals, actually. Yeah, funny connection, Jack and I noticed here, Snackers, that 28% stock jump to Virgin Galactic on Monday reminds us of what Moderna did back in December. Back in December, when Moderna announced effective results of their vaccine with no side effects on humans, their stock price jumped big too, just like this. Well, both companies

spent a lot of money up front on this stuff. Both companies have a potentially dangerous product and both announced successful human trials. Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, Blue Argent, they're all investing huge R&D into dangerous ventures with no guarantees of success. Yesterday, Virgin Galactic stock got to enjoy a viable product celebration, baby. We're used to seeing it in pharma. Now we're seeing it in space too. For our second story, Jack, are you a judge, Judy guy or a people's court guy? See, neither. Okay. I'm a my cousin Vinny guy. And you You know it. Snackers, we just got the closing arguments to the most important Apple court case in like in years. The judge decides, actually, but the judge seems to be an Apple skeptic.

It's a little awkward. Now, before we jump into this, honestly, Jack, we could probably end the story after this. The App Store, it's big. It's really big. The App Store is kind of the defendant in this case, and it brings in $70 billion a year estimated. That's right. App Store commissions. That is bigger than PepsiCo.

Let that sink in. I feel like that's the takeaway. We could probably end the product. here, the whole pod. We're not going to. No, we're not. To sprinkle a little context on here, let's talk about phase one of the trial, Jack. The plaintiffs make their case. Epic Games took the stand. Enter the honorable, I guess, enter the regular Tim Sweeney. He's the day one witness. All right, Tim Sweeney, he is angry that Fortnite, which Epic Game owns another game, has paid over $100 million to Apple through App Store commissions in the past few years. And that's because

Apple takes a 30% cut of all in-app purchases made in the Fortnite game in year one. And 15% every year after. If you want to ride the iPhone highway, you got to pay the App Store toll baby. Funny thing, Apple has never said publicly how much profit they make off of those toll booth payments. So this gaming executive and his team calculated that 70 to 80% of App Store commissions are pure Apple profit. That was like a week. Phase two of the trial was the defendant's defendant's defense.

offending themselves. Okay. So 15th, final day of the trial, Apple CEO, Tim Cook shows up, takes the stand. Jack, this is like seeing Santa for the first time. He put his hand on the Bible. He rose his left hand. Timmy did. A lot of hands. Not our buddy, Timmy. And he actually said, get this, he said he doesn't know if the app store is profitable for Apple. They don't calculate it. Jack, you got to love the lawyers here, because he didn't say, I can't find out, or I couldn't ask an intern to do this. I'll tell you, if I made an embarrassing amount of money, I would say, I don't know. I don't calculated. They can create a life-changing world product that's transformed the entire universe, but they can't figure out how much profit they're making off of it. Oh, arithmetic. Sorry.

So, he then kicked things up a notch and Tim Cook kind of turned the table on Fortnite and Epic Games. In his testimony on Friday last week, he kind of implied that the world is lucky that Apple only charges 30% first year, 15% after. Tim, again, not our buddy, Timmy, no confusion there, says that the App Store gets 100,000 App Store applications every single week. And he's basically like, somebody's got to review them. You'll want to keep the iPhone interstate clean. You got to put 30% in the Apple App Store toll booth. Snackers, which brings us to phase three of the trial, the current phase, the anti-climactic phase.

Turns out, we have to wait up to three months to get the verdict. Yeah, that's because this is a bench trial. The judge is going to decide there's no jury here, unfortunately. There's no jury. No drama. Ladies and gentlemen, the jury, there's no one there. No. The verdict's expecting three months by Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Apple, the App Store, and all app graders? It looks like you're charging the gamers to subsidize Wells Fargo. Okay, not our words there, but a fascinating wild quote from the judge. The honorable judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers, she's the decider and she seems sympathetic to Epic's claim. Yeah, we noticed she spent a whopping 10 minutes shock. willingly grilling Tim Cook on the very last day of this trial. And normally it's just the lawyers that would grill a witness like that. And she got Tim Cook to admit that the majority of app store revenues come from video games.

Okay, Fortnite and Roblox, they're paying tons to the app storing commissions because so many of their gamers are adding those in-game transactions. Meanwhile, non-monetizing apps? Like TikTok, Google Maps, Instagram, or Wells Fargo? They're paying nothing. Which is why she said, you're charging the gamers to subsidize Wells Fargo. Now, we don't know what she's going to decide in this huge case for Apple. But her questioning signals some sympathy for Epic GameSide. For our third and final story, modern fertility just got acquired by Roe for over $225 million.

Femtech. It's an emerging industry, feminine tech. And this is one of the biggest deals we've seen. Okay, Jack, classic opposites attract situation over here. Okay, Roe is a $5 billion startup. It hasn't an IPOed yet. And they start. as a men's telehealth company. Yeah, when Viagra's patents expired, Roe jumped on him and began selling generic erectile dysfunction drugs. They kind of sucked Viagra. And we're for it.

They prescribed via Zoom meetings and then they send you generic monthly medications in millennial-friendly package. Yeah, it's going to come looking like some kind of a cashew butter subscription. They don't just do erectile dysfunction, by the way. That's just how they started. But today, we're talking about modern fertility, a $225 million femtech startup. So if you're thinking about trying to get pregnant or freezes, you're thinking about trying to get pregnant or freezing your eggs or other family planning,

modern fertility thinks you should do one of their fertility tests first. And if you do, the results might say your eggs are super fertile. Now is a great time to try to have a baby or to harvest your eggs. Or they might say we ran a hormone test. You should know this, this, and that. Either way, knowledge is power. Now, before modern fertility got acquired by Roe, they could brag that they boosted revenues by four times in the past year

because they found customer stickiness in three different ways. Yeah, here's what Jack and I find fascinating about modern fertility. The stickiness is in so many different levels. First, they get you with a financial commitment. That keeps you sticky. Their flagship test, their fertility test, it's only $159, which compares to a $1,500 bill you'd get at a fertility clinic. Okay, so it's cheaper than the fertility clinic, but like it's just expensive enough. Now, you're not going to quit on this thing at $159.

Then you start inputting your personal data because they have a free ovulation and cycle tracking out. And that is the data commitment. It becomes part of your life and you don't want to start over with a different app afterwards. Jack, to quote the Batman movie, that's power you can't buy. And then they're going to try to upsell you because the results of your fertility test might say, oh, you're deficient in certain hormones. Why don't you try out this 30-day, $30 pack of prenatal vitamins? Funny, Jack, it sounds like Modern Fertility's free app just became a monthly subscription,

which is a third form of stickiness. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Monty? Femtech like this could unlock another great economic shift. Snackers, shocker from the census, U.S. population growth in the last decade was its slowest since the 1930s. And that was measured by the U.S. birth rate, which was 1.7 babies per woman, short of the two babies per person, required to replace the population. You got to replace both parents. Now, there are a lot of reasons for this that happened to be bad. It's unfortunate that child care is so expensive in this country. that might get you resistant to having a kid. Also, we're one of the few developed countries with no paid parental leave.

But this slowdown in population growth, Jack, also some good reasons. Yes, there are fewer accidental pregnancies than in American history. And more women are in the workforce working in higher positions than ever before. Now, Snackers, you add all this up. An economists are actually concerned that slowing population growth could result in fewer people contributing back to the economy. But knowledge about one's fertility can help working women further their careers, boost their productivity and have kids if they want at a time that suits them. 50 years ago, the first wave of birth control was a revolution for the economy. It was. And today, Femtech could create an even larger one. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there?

Virgin Galactic will get you from A back to A. There's no B involved in this. Space tourism has a lot of similarities to the pharmaceutical industry. Apple versus Epic, the court case came to a close this week, but the verdict, it'll take a bit. Yeah, the judge kind of short her cards, though. She's more of an apple steptic. Modern fertility is the latest telemedicicine asset in Rose portfolio.

And fertility knowledge, that could unlock economic and family gains. Now, time for our snack fact of the day, which Jack and I are submitting from Jack and me. All right, just 30% of American adults said that they often or sometimes personally experienced discrimination because of their race or ethnicity.

And that's according to an NPR PBS News Hour, a mayorist poll that was conducted just this month. But the percentage of Americans who feel personally discriminated, it varies drastically along racial and ethnic lives. Significantly, get this. So only 15% of white people have said they've been treated unfairly because of their race. Whereas 61% of black Americans and 39% of Latino people said that they have. So Jack and I heard the stat. We were just talking about it. And to be honest, we've been just aware of a whole bunch of times throughout our life when we could have been treated differently if we look different, but we hadn't been in a whole bunch of situations.

I did a really stupid thing last month. I walked my dog basically in somebody's backyard, totally inappropriate. And had I not been a white guy, I could have been in a lot more trouble than I was. Snackers, it's just different. So we're wishing love and peace to all of you on this anniversary of George Floyd's death. And Nick and I'll see you tomorrow. And before we go, congrats to legendary snacker, Nick Van Dam, who listens on his treadmill, who just completed his first.

acquisition of a company. And shout out to the Whitney's on vacation in Illinois. And to the Waccondons of Wall Street, turning tiny investments into serious wins. And Samil Shah, who's graduating from San Diego State from India. And congratulations to San Volio graduating with an MBA from Cornell, originally from Costa Rica. And happy anniversary to David and Jenny Tan from British Columbia. And Mike and Karen Martinez down in Wichita Falls, Texas. And Hannah Banana and Isaac, who are celebrating their anniversary in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. And happy birthday, Heather in Spokane, Washington, and Scott Baylon in Encinitas, California. And a fantastic fourth birthday to Judah Decker in Mount Dora, Florida.

And anybody else celebrating anything today? Make it a T-Boy. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack, Nick-owned stock of Apple, I own stock of Roblox. 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. I'm a my cousin Vinnie guy and you know it.