The Best One Yet - “Every kiss begins with Jared’s” — Signet Jewelers’ Benchmark Brand. Goldman’s humble-brag. Impossible’s big hire.

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

The world’s biggest diamond seller tells us everything we need to know about jewelry on Earth right now. Big Bank Goldman Sachs just made a major humble-brag. And Impossible Foods’ new hire is why we’re thinking of a new business line for them: Carbon-Neutrality-as-a-Service.$GS $SIG $BYNDGot 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 Snacks Daily. It is Wednesday, January 20. No question. This is a T-boy. The best one yet, Jack, what's our first story today? Every kiss begins with K, especially when they went to Jared. Jack and I are looking at Signet Jewelers, Earth's biggest jewelry store. That's what we're looking at. For our second story, it's Big Banks' earning season. And Goldman Sachs just did things the most Goldman way we've ever seen. Jack, there's only one way we could put this. The art of the humble brag. For our third and final story, Impossible Foods just hired the woman who wrote the Paris Climate Accord. Jack and I had a lot of ideas on this one, but we decided we're going to

have a new business line for Impossible Foods. Jack, C N-A-S. C-N-A-S. C-N-A-S. Carbon neutrality as a service. Real thing, going to be a thing. But Snackers, before we jump into that, honestly, Jack, a wonderful mix of stories today. We've got a public service announcement for you. Put the fork down, drop the hot pocket, and walk. Walk away, man. Walk away. Jack, trick question. If you're eating a hot pocket with a fork, you've got two crimes going on. That's a fireball offense in 46 days. Well, it turns out hot pockets is recalling 760,000 calorie dense hot pockets because of an extraneous material situation. Now, I'm a bit of a hot pocket connoisseur because I had a childhood where I had a microwave and I was hungry.

It's key. Those are the two key ingredients. And I know there's 50 flavors of hot pockets, Nick. Well, Jack, if you know all 50 flavors, you also know that shards of plastic with glass filling, not meant to be one of those flavors. That's right. Hot pockets are being recalled right now because of plastic and glass in them. So make sure you do not jump into that. Now, Snackers, you probably thought Hot Pockets were like invented at 2 a.m. when a couple of Sigette pledges accidentally rolled up a pizza on the couch.

Why don't they sell these things, man? Well, Jack and I jumped in Snacks out. We wanted to learn more about Hot Pockets. Turns out they were actually invented by a couple of strategic, immigrant MBA students. This caloric monstrosity was invented by David and Paul Mirage, Jewish-Iranian brothers back in the 1970s. Turns out David and Paul were getting their MBAs from University to California, Berkeley, and noticed there was a U.S. trend for frozen European waffles going on at the time. Interesting. They also noticed that women were joining the workforce in America at high

rates, which meant there was less time for the families to whip up like a three-course dinner. Jack, roll up those two trends together, throwing maybe enough protein and cheese to make the surgeon general nervous. And boom, you got yourself a hot pocket recipe. David and Paul sold to Nestle $2.6 billion in 2002. Hot pockets. Let's hit our three stories. You're tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something illegal out the way. The snacks are about the hair 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 security. Nope. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, Signet Jewelers is the largest jewelry chain in the world. This company has a publicly traded stock, which has surged 30% this month because even Signet is shocked at how well they're doing. They're looking at this. They got their own imposter syndrome. going on here. It is rough at Cigna. You deserve the success, Signet. Yeah, you do. Well, you know Signette Snackers, even if you don't know Cignet, because, for example, Zales, the Diamond

store. Every kiss begins with Cate. He went to Jared's the Gallery of Jewel. Jack, by the way, Galleria, Rule number 18 of marketing. Change a letter. Change your destiny. I don't know what that means. All those wonderful, wonderful jewelry stores owned by the single chain, Signet Jewelers. And Cignt Jewelers' earnings report, it reads like a lifetime movie. script. Jack and I had a lot of phone with this. If you jump in snack style and like enjoy this earnings report, the first thing they'll tell you about is their turnaround plan. Jack, what do they call it? It's called the path to brilliance, which we approve of. Now, let's say, you know, you're going to splend a lot of thousands of dollars on a diamond ring. You're going to end up paying,

Jack, what do they call their payment system technology for that? No worries, because love takes care and will take care of your credit card digits. They actually named their transaction system. That's insane. Jack, how about the center of me collection? This is their like high-end jewelry they're pushing right now. It's basically a diamond sandwich in case one diamond wasn't enough and you needed three. Can't go wrong with a diamond sandwich, too loaves of bread on that thing. I'll take an open-faced diamond sandwich, please. Funny thing, though, Jack and I noticed about Signette jewelry. The stock was actually down in 2020. Yeah, because we're all like basically toilet paper or necklace. I'll take the toilet. Also, if you're going to splurge on that emerald, you kind of want to see the green.

up in person. It really is brilliant when you look through one of those monopoly monocles. You know those things? Those are fantastic. The peanut guy is a monocle. So everyone was kind of shocked when Cignet stock jumped last week because of a total surprise during their holiday period. Over the holidays, sales jumped 6% compared to last year. That's something not even the executives that Cigna expected. No, they had no idea this was coming, but they felt like they could kind of explain it. Because right now, you probably didn't do like the Cabo Christmas travel. Maybe you usually pay a 200 cover for a prefix New Year's Eve dinner. But you didn't do that this year either. So you could take all that saved of cash, you know, put it in a savings account. Or apparently some people are putting it

into euger diamonds. We don't know who these people are. So that's how you rationalize the jump in sales. But another surprise happened last quarter, which was that the bridal category grew by double digits, despite weddings not really happening last year. No, weddings going on right now. Meantime, people are getting bigger and bigger diamond rings apparently. Now, Nick and I managed to squeeze in our weddings in 2018 and 2019. Very lucky. But for those who had 2020, you realize you're probably not spending on a caterer. No, you're not. There's no destination wedding to worry about. And there is not. You may as well upgrade that rock by a carrot or a 10th. Or a 10th of a character or two. Which led to the shocking final surprise of this entire Cignette Jewelers earnings report.

61% jump in online jewelry sales last quarter. That's right. Despite the lack of Monocle, That's because they're actually selling jewelry online at a pace they never expected. They actually did 200,000 virtual consultations over the same period. Basically, if you're going to drop like a few thousand dollars on a ring, they'll set you up in Zoom with someone to tell you that this ring is like high quality. Or like, you know how, Jack, you know how like Walmart's doing the like curbside pickup thing and Target is too? Yeah. They're doing curbside pickup over at Kay's Jewelers. A guy comes to you with gloves and hands you the ring. The rock is sitting right there on a velvet pillow for you to observe. Every ring deserves a pillow. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Cignette

Jewelers? Signet Jewelers is a benchmark brand. And the patterns we see with jewelry, we might be able to see in other industries too. All right, Snackers, don't think of Cigna as like just a jewelry company. This is the largest diamond retailer on planet Earth. And we just learned that a surprising number of customers splurged on high-end diamond gifts over the holidays. Okay, so the first thought that Jack and I had on this, where else could be seen the same? splurging behavior going on that isn't just jewelry. Maybe Constellation brands will tell us that people splurged on the higher shelf wine last quarter. Puppies first Pino. And then you get the high end canada goose. Maybe you go for the nicer jacket this year. Maybe Yeti Coolers's earnings will tell us that

people splurged on the $300 Yeti instead of the $50 Coleman cooler. So to wait, Jack and I see it, use Signet as a benchmark brand so you can figure out how other similar splurge brands might be doing right now. Benchmark brands tell you about way more than just the one benchmark brand. For our second story, Golden Slacks, Goldman Sachs just acknowledged a difficult environment and a challenging year on many fronts. And they also doubled their freaking profits. Yeah, they doubled their profits over at Goldman Sachs. Not really tough job for the CEO of Goldman.

How to announce ridiculously good profits when the country is suffering on multiple. multiple fronts. Jack, that burden just fell across the back of CEO David Solomon. And what did he tell us? We were able to help clients navigate a difficult environment. And as a result, we achieve strong results across the entire franchise. Yeah, here's the funny thing, though, Snackers, Goldman's clients, not exactly facing a difficult situation right now. Goldman's clients are hanging out at their Hampton six-bedroom retreat, equipped to the wine seller, an unprecedented financial success. one second, just zooming in from the equestrian chamber. So there are a whole bunch of big New York City banks out there. So the way Jack and I like to keep track of them is we like to think of Goldman

as though as like the Wall Streetiest of Wall Street banks. Wells Fargo is the least Wall Streety of the Wall Street banks. Do you agree? Yeah, it is. Pleaded khakis there. Pleaded khakis there. True. Now, of the six big U.S. Bank Snackers, Goldman Sachs gets the largest percentage of their total revenue from Wall Street activities. It's also the only New York Bank that has a shake shack in the building and owns their own commuting ferry. It's true, we've seen it. We've never been let inside, but Goldman Sachs has a ferry across the Hudson River from the New York headquarters and the key to the New Jersey building. Jack, you want to give you a little trivia here? According to PFWTMs, there's a lot of velvet. A lot of velvet in that ferry. So when Jack and I jumped into Goldman's earnings

report, Snacks out, we thought, you know what for Snackers, we're going to whip up the three key Wall Street clients that Goldman Sachs is laking a lot of money off of right now. The first type of client is any company that wants to IPO. They're going to hit up Goldman Sachs' investment banking advisor. We're talking to Airbnb, Doordash, Wish, an insatiable demand for stock of those tech IPOs and SPACs that led to a 25% jump in revenues for Goldman's investment banking division. It's been pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty nice business for that business. Okay, so that's the investment banking division. The next division is the equities division. Picture Fidelity, T-Row price, T-I-A-Cref, any other company that's probably holding your 401k money.

Goldman actually helps them buy a bunch of stock for those 401K. So they'll help those companies buy a billion dollars of one stock and sell a billion dollars of another stock. And they'll take some nice fees, which drove that business up 40% in revenues compared to last year for Goldman Sachs. Okay, so you got investment banking. You got equities. But then finally, Goldman's making a lot of money off of asset management.

There's a lot of like entities out there with gigantic bank accounts. We're thinking like universities, trust, foundations, and hedge funds. Basically, entities. So what Goldman says is, hey, hey, entity, we will whip up some custom investments for you. Oh, you want to invest in Japanese government bonds with a dash of Thailand? Sure. Well, guess what? We got something for you.

We're just going to take a 1% fee off the $1 billion transaction. Yeah, 1% fee off a couple billion. Not a bad thing. And that business, asset management for Goldman Sachs, was up 7% from last year. Again, Goldman Sachs' clients were facing. a difficult environment last quarter. Jack just trying to put one foot in front of the other, live every day. Just living day by day. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Golden Slacks? Everything was perfect for Goldman last quarter, except the future. Yeah, Snackers, wild thing Jack and I

just noticed, Goldman Sachs' stock is already up 50% since the election. Clearly, investors like knew this was going to be a really solid quarter for Golden Sacks. So Nick and I found two reasons why the stock probably fell yesterday by about 5% at first and ultimately down 2%. First, Biden announced he's got a new head of the SEC. The guy's name is Gary Gensler. He's progressive and he's now basically the top police officer of public stock markets. That's what the SEC does. He used to work at Goldman, but now he's on the outside.

Yeah, it's not like a hey, Goldman, how you doing? It's more like a hey, Goldman, I know what you're doing. The second thing we noticed yesterday, the second key issue here, the Senate is now controlled by Democrats and many Democrats. believe banks are probably making too much bank right now. The next four years of regulation might be less about helping Goldman make more profits and more about protecting Goldman's customers. Goldman Sachs, everything was perfect except for the future. For our third and final story, Impossible Foods just hired a top United Nations diplomat, Keyhire, who is an expert on climate

change. We are hungry to see carbon neutrality as a service from Impossible Foods. Yep. CNWAS, CNAS, we think it should be a thing. This story is a small step for man, a giant leap for soy-based protein. Okay, Snacker, funny thing that Jack and I noticed, a big reason why, like, very smart, very qualified people work in public service, they're kind of just looking for the next job. Case in point, Christina Figueres. She's from Costa Rica.

She's a diplomat who took the lead at the United Nations. Basically, she committed six years of her life to leading and creating the Paris Accords, the global pact to limit global warming, that was like, that was her. That was, that's what she did. Until now, now Christina Figueras is the latest board member at a corporation called Impossible Foods. Yeah, not a bad side hustle. By the way, Impossible Foods, it is a sumo plant-based meat company. It is sumo because it hasn't IPOed yet. So if you want to invest in Impossible Foods, you're straight up missing out. Now, here's why this match is so fascinating. The food industry is considered, according to her, one of the main levers of change. inch on global warming. Not oil, not cars, not coal. It's food that can affect global warming.

And fully raising one cattle, it requires a ton of land to graze, the crops, the water, all that, a lot of material. Beef is a major carbon footprint. Plus, there's the flatulence factor we got to talk about, which is a real thing. The biggest cause of methane in the world is raising livestock for meat. And methane is a greenhouse gas, unfortunately. So that whole big issue is a huge selling point for Impossible Foods and for its public market cousin beyond meat, which is publicly traded. The truth is, plant-based meat isn't really healthier for humans. It is just way better for the environment. So now, Jack and I are thinking, now that they've got Figueras on board at Impossible Foods, Impossible Foods can learn how to communicate all those

points we just mentioned to different demographics of different consumers. The environmental benefits. After all, Ms. Figueras did help communicate climate change to the entire world in her work with the parasocorn. But here's the kicker. Jack and I don't think those consumers she could be helping out with are necessary people. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Impossible Foods? Carbon neutrality as a service. That should be a new business line at Impossible Foods. I mean, Jack, just like Uncle Ben told Spidey, with great profits come great responsibility. Companies are expected to step up and solve society's problems right now. Case of point, Jack and I love pointing this out. 2020 was the year of the chief.

woke officer, the CWO. And the first initiative of a CWO who wants to climb the corporate ladder, make a pledge that your company will become carbon neutral. All right, Jack, I got the whiteboard here. We got Amazon. We got Nestle. We got Ford. We got Verizon.

Hundreds more committed to eliminating greenhouse gases. Actually, getting carbon neutral, though, is a major challenge because you're not just going to build your own solar panels, your own wind turbines, making everything go electric. This is hard work that takes years. You can't just build a forest somewhere. are only so many trees you can plant. Impossible foods could make a business out of helping companies achieve carbon neutrality through food. Here's what we're thinking.

Like with each bulk sale to a corporate cafeteria, Impossible Foods could include a certificate of carbon avoidance. Impossible Foods could become the official faux meat provider of Major League Baseball. Yeah, why not? Helping each team reduce their carbon footprint with bacon cheese faux burger. Snackers, it is hard to go carbon neutral. Impossible Foods could make sure your company's diet is. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there?

Cignet Jewelers somehow sold more jewelry this holiday season than the year before. Honestly, they don't even know how they did it. It's a benchmark brand. It tells us a lot about what consumers are doing when they're spending. For our second story, Goldman Sachs' clients are not facing a difficult situation. No, they're not. They're enjoying tremendous financial success in the stock market, just like Goldman Sachs. For a third and final story, impossible.

Third and final story, Impossible Foods just hired a top climate change expert. One word, five letters, CNWAS, CNAS, CNAAS, carbon neutrality as a service. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one tweeted in by legendary snacker, Tiffany Schmidt in lovely Ann Arbor, Michigan. Locks. Locks is delicious. Yeah, locks are delicious. Smoke salmon, you go to Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side, and you just get everything. Locks is what you call salmon when it's served on a bagel on top of cream cheese. That was a key development actually in this story, Jack, because here's a wild thing about the word locks. The pronunciation and the meaning of the word locks hasn't changed in 8,000 years.

This is like the oldest word in any language. Locks is still also the same thing. It's still smoke salmon. The only update is that you now smear at a top cream cheese on your bagel. It's the only update. Oh, and for context, the word hello has only been around for like, 100 years. Yeah, think about that. Snackers, love getting a chat with you today. Jack, we should do this tomorrow. Indeed. We got one request, H-Y-H-Y-S-D. Ask your friends, have you had your snacks daily? That's how we

grow the pod. Nick and I'll see you tomorrow. Can't wait. And before we go, Snackers, happy birthday to Molly Kolopnik in Des Moines, Iowa. Happy birthday to Andrew Lorted, another Michiganer from Ann Arbor, A-2. And happy birthday to Andrew Bester in lovely Harris in New York. By the way, Snackers, if you want a shout out on the pod, remember, all you have to do is go to the description of this episode, wherever you're getting your podcast, and click on the submit link right there. Click the link. It's a simple Google form. We'd love to give you a shout out. If you know, you know. This is Jack. Nick and I both own stock of Beyond Meat and Airbnb. I own stock of Amazon. Nick on stock of ShakeShack. 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.