The Best One Yet - “First ever Charge Chugger” — GM’s eHummer. Snap’s lucky quarter. Netflix’s inflexion point.

Episode Date: October 22, 2020

General Motors has taken the most unsustainable car every — the Hummer — and made it electric. Snap’s stock surged 28% because in-between moment content is having a moment. And Netflix fell 7% because growth in the USA and Canada is virtually zero.$SNAP $GM $NFLXGot 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 October 22nd. Nick, is it Friday yet? It's not. It's kind of Friday if you want to think about it that way. It's kind of Friday. Thursday's the new Friday. That's why it's Thursday or really Friday the 22nd. That's why this is the best one.

TV-O-Y, Jack, what do we got for the first story over here? Snapchat is trying to make its stock go viral. Shares search 28% to a record high as poetic justice against the OZ. The original Zucking. Second story, Jack, what do we got? General Motors just crossed the biggest milestone for electric car industry yet. Jack, am I looking at myself an electric hummer over here? Not a gas guzzler.

No. A juice guzzler. Can we call it a charge chugger, please? We can call it a charge chugger. Maybe a plug-and-pounder, third and final story. What do we got, Jack? Netflix stock dropped 6% yesterday because the flix is facing an infliction point. Subscripturation is real, and it's spectacular.

But before we hit those three great stories, we're calling this one the first ever IIPO. You're going to double IPO this thing because we got an influencer IPO IPO on our hands. That's right. An Italian social media influencer is going public on the Milan Stock Exchange. Honestly, Jack and I couldn't believe this. We found out that a 33-year-old Kiara Ferranji has 22 million followers on her Instagram account. Melodic pronunciation right there, Nick. Thank you, Jack. She wants to make the selfie a publicly tradable asset. Now, the business model here is it's coming down to a whole plan to monetize everything based off her clothing to lifestyle persona. Her beige cashmere product get up in Florence just got a quarter million likes.

I wear a beige sweater jack and now I'm second guessing my entire ward. This is the most profound test yet of the influencer business model. The analysts are already asking like, can a marketing subsector become a sustainable, profitable, long-term entity? What's going on at the annual sharehold meeting? Are you voting on like the next Instagram filter for Q3? Jack, if you buy stock in a person's face, is that creepy? The first ever IPO on a single human self-promoted brand. Jack, correction, it's the second.

First one, Elon and Tesla. Very good. Let's add our three stars. 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. 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. 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 Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, after 10 years of being dead, GM just resurrected the Hummer, but different. This thing was like a 300-pound noseguard of vehicles, and it just announced like a keto diet and it's doing yoga night. Now, to fully get the context in the story, we've got to go back to the mid-2000s. Jack and I didn't know each other yet.

In fact, true story, the first time I saw Jack was in a Facebook photo, he was wearing a white tuxedo and my sister was concerned. That was the impression I was going for. I'm huger. But I'm not a first impression kind of guy. Freshman or roommates, we kicked it off right there. But the price of gas was a different story back then.

The price of gas was $1.50 per gown. Like every time you watch the gown thing go up by one, the dollar thing was like closely behind. Help that we just invaded a top oil-producing country, Iraq, which is partially what help with that. Right. So we were thinking gas prices were going to stay low. And Al Gore, the former vice president, his movie and inconvenient truth about climate change hadn't even come out yet. Yes, you'd be driving your car and he didn't realize it was directly related to Greenland shrinking. That's why so many of us drove enormous cars with brutal fuel efficiency and like six rows of seats.

You got to check out my escalate. It can haul seven full-sized strollers. My suburban can fit the whole team in the back. The whole football team. But then in 2008, Jack and I were living in Burlington that summer. Great summer. Our automotive decadence was popped when gas jumped up to $3.30 a gallon. Gas prices spiking was kind of the first domino. And the last domino to fall was General Motors announcing bankruptcy the next year in 2009.

And then one year after that, 2010, GM sells its very last Hummer. The thing is done. Until now. Yep. It's back, baby. During game one of the World Series on Tuesday night, there was a two minute and 15 second commercial announcing the Hummer is back. Jack, two minutes and 15 seconds, that's not a commercial. That's a Sundance Festival short film. That's like when you pay one ticket to watch a movie and you watch two movies.

What do you call that, the double header? Doubleplex. Something dupio. But Snackers, in the meantime, this huge commercial featured a huge vehicle with a huge spokesperson. LeBron James is the spokesperson that announced it's back. General Motors has officially resurrected the Hummer and it's kind of like, you know, like the Hulk and a Jeep, you know, had a baby. But that baby got bit by a spider and then rubbed a balloon on its hair to create electricity. This thing is part Hummer, part pickup truck, and it's $112,000. Huge price tag coming out of the city of Detroit where it's going to be manufactured. GM is calling this the ultimate off-road electric vehicle super truck.

It's going to include, you know, four-wheel drive, seems kind of standard, but then a thousand horsepower. Yeah, and three motors. There is nothing subtle about this vehicle. You don't need more than one from when I last checked. And this caps off a big news week for General Motors. Yes, it does, because we just found out they're also converting a plant in Tennessee into an electric plant for $2 billion to make the Cadillac electric SUV. And last Friday, they got approval from the state of California to test their cruise self-driving cars with no human being behind the wheel. I've seen these things, Jack, rolling around their neighborhood, they've got the cool 42 camera hats on top of the car.

Are you testing to see if it works by jaywalking? I kind of do, and it's kind of freaking them out of it. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at General Motors? This is the cultural milestone for electric vehicles. Snackers, everyone's talking electric vehicles. You've seen 50 spacks on spacks about these things, but electric vehicles are only 2.6% of all cars sold. And 1% of all cars on the road in 2019.

So even though there's a lot of press on these things, when you look at the numbers, electric cars haven't moved from early adopters to mainstream. But with this vehicle coming out, electric vehicles are passing a critical threshold. And that's because it's such a wild swing. The original gas Hummer got like nine miles per gallon, no joke, when it came to polluting. The Hummer was one of the most polluting things on the planet.

It was designed for the military and used for groceries. But now the Hummer brand has swung 180 degrees from gas guzzler to electric charge chugger. Now that the sustainable version of the least sustainable car is coming, there's no going back. It's a cultural milestone. Our second store, we got Snapchat, which finally gets revenge for the original Zucking. It's poetic justice because Snapstock just jumped 28% cruising past its previous record hot. Jack, I just got a memo here from Captain Benson. We got ourselves the first ever victim of a zucking.

Law and order. The date of the crime, August 2016. Jack, the victim? Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat. The crime? Instagram launching stories. a copycat of Snapchat. Not something you want to see.

It was the original Zuck, and we don't even like to talk about it. You know, a Zuck. When Facebook copies someone else's core product or feature, and then does it better than that company. Now, before the Zucking, Snapchat was living its best life. User growth that year, up 63%. The years after that Zucking, in 2016, it was never the same.

No, it wasn't. Growth slowed to 16%, 5% brutal, and 13% in the years after the Zucking. Not as. fun. Now, Snapchat stock, as a result of all that, added up, it entered 2020 at half of its price of its 2016 IPO. And how many profits has it made? Quarterly profits. Jack, I'm checking out the body count here and it is zero. They have made zero quarterly profits. But this summer, the third quarter of 2020 was revenge for Snapchat. Jack, can we call this thing, Rise of Der Spiegel? The Rise of Der Spiegel. That's right. Snackers,

for the, well, first of all here, Evan Spiegel, the CEO and his wife, Miranda, Kim, just welcome to baby boy. Good point, Nick, who's a good boy? Hello, Miles. This name is Miles. Future Snacker. Send us a snack fact. Second, Snapchat announced on Tuesday, record revenue. It increased by 52% from last year. Let that sink in. After all those numbers, we just said, revenue jumped 52%. We are crediting that record jump into revenue to the Facebook ad boycott that went down this summer. That's because over the last few months, over a thousand companies stopped paying for ads on Facebook and Instagram. The boycott happened in July, and it was referred to

as stop hate for profit. It was like an internet movement. Yeah, people were protesting Facebook's role in posts that promote violence and spreading misinformation and destroying democracy. So Bucks went from Zuck to Snapchat this summer as a result of not going to Facebook. And Jack and I noticed it was summed up perfectly by Snap's very own chief business officer. She says that advertisers tried this summer to align their marketing efforts with platforms who share their corporate values, aka they don't want to do stuff on Facebook because and all those things we just mentioned. 52% jump in revenue.

Nick, what was the profit? Still no profit, Jack. But the loss shrank compared to last year's loss. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who disappear over at Snapchat? Snap got lucky. Nothing else. That's it.

That's the only takeaway, Jack. Facebook was going through an unprecedented advertising boycott, and TikTok, another Snapchat competitor, got quasi-baned by the President of the United States. Snacks team Italy and Zadon just got kicked out of the 2006 World Cup final. Snap cannot rely on its two biggest rivals getting boycotted and banned every quarter. You don't get that lucky twice in one pandemic. The CFO is pretty upfront about it with investors.

It's not clear if key sources of advertising demand will materialize in the same way this year as in previous years. Translation, past revenue performance definitely not guaranteed. Probably not going to happen the same way next quarter. But investors seem to be ignoring it. They jumped up the stock by 28% yesterday like a Zadon headbut. For our third and final story, Netflix stock just fell 7%. And now the flicks is facing an infliction point. Key moment for a few different reasons.

First of one, this is their first ever earnings having co-CEOs. Nick and I used to be co-CEOs of our startup market snacks. Yes, we did. It looks good on a business car. It does. It works really well. Nice feng shui there. But the best part about being co-ceos is people constantly telling you that's not a thing it won't work out and then you have to prove them wrong consistently.

The best best part is having something. somebody to blame. Oh, that mistake? That's Nick's department. Oh, you're looking for the other CEO, Michael's CEO over here. Now, there was good news that one of the CEOs at Netflix announced yesterday. Yeah, Stranger Things. Restarted production, season four. Spoiler, there are more demigorgans, everyone. Are those the same as the dragons? They're demons with flower heads. So no surcy in that one. All right. So bad news, though, also came from Netflix's CFO that they just added 2.2 million subscribers last quarter. That's down from 16 million new subscribers two quarters ago and 10 million last quarter. So we noticed there's a dip. So Jack and I are thinking, you know what, maybe that was a

one quarter issue and maybe they'll expect more subscribers next quarter. They said they're expecting six million. There's no pent up demand. Six million is less new subscribers than what they got last holiday season, nine million new subscribers. So a major slowdown in new subscribers at Netflix. The stock fell because the boom is over. Explosive pandemic growth, it's passed. it seems like that explosive pandemic growth may have sucked away future growth and just like made it happen sooner. It's kind of like the plot of Emily and Paris. Sounds fun, moving from Chicago to the Shamsa Lisei, should be great. Turns out all that fun operating is a little complicated when you don't speak the native tongue. You'll get through it, Emily, you'll get through it. When you go further

into the earnings, like Nick and I did, we jumped in snack style, we noticed a particular type of subscription saturation, aka subscription saturation. Yeah, in this case, it looks. It looks at the looks like the US and Canada, the homes with Netflix are like totally saturated. They're filled. They're done. Netflix only had 180,000 new subscribers in the USA and Canada in the past three months. That's 0.2% growth, virtually zero growth. So you must be wondering, where are those new subscribers? Half of them came from the Asia Pacific region. Which leads us to our takeaway. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies on the couch over Netflix? The low hanging fruit has been picked. Yep. Netflix must creatively reach these new non-streamers. Snackers, Netflix is splurging

$14 billion a year on original content that won't add new subscribers. It just engages existing subscribers. Sixty-three new shows on obscure baking techniques is great for existing baking Netflixers. But Netflix has just hit 200 million paid subscribers. Congrats, they need to get the 300 million eventually. And to get the next 100 million, we envision creative new Flicks initiatives to get like non-North Americans, non-Western Europeans. Case and point, Jack and I thought this was fascinating. Look at what they're doing in one particular emerging market. They're doing streamfest in India on December 4th. Free Netflix for anybody. It's like www.netflix. India. Jump on it. Anybody can watch without even logging in. In the second most populated

country in the world, this is like IHOP Free Pancake Day, but for 48 hours, but for a billion people. This is crazy. Americans, Canadians, Western Europeans were the low-hanging streaming fruit for Netflix to pick. But get in the rest of the world, that's going to require cultural and financial creativity. Like StreamFest in India. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us on this fine Friday? General Motors has 23 electric vehicle models coming by 2023, and one is a former gas guzzler. The electric hummers arrival is a cultural moment for the electric vehicle. For our second story, Snapchat had way more. of those ads that interrupt your video with five-second unskippable promotions for mattress,

mattress, mattress. That's why investors handed SNF stock a 28% gain, even though it got pretty lucky. I didn't see that coming, Jack. I didn't see that coming. For our third and final story, Netflix has hit subscriptionation in North America. And getting the rest of the world to subscribe requires some creativity. Now, time for our snack factor today sent in by George Fike, a grad, recent grad of Mississippi State. The tallest building in the state of Vermont is only 11 stories tall on Main Street in Burlington, Vermont. Jack, how does that compare to the other 50 states? That is the shortest, tallest building in the state of all the 50

states. Jack, as a New Yorker, I feel like I should point out here that that 11 stories is actually shorter than the shortest building in New York City. That's absurdly not true. Snackers, have a fantastic Thursday. Remember to share your snacks. Tell them H-Y-H-Y-S. Have you had your snacks daily? We love it. you help us grow. We'll see you tomorrow, and if you know, you know. Now before we go, Snackers, congrats to Isaiah Stowers, who ran a full 26.2 mile marathon around Stockton, California. Guess it was just another Wednesday. Are there any other kind of marathons? And congrats to Theran Kumar, who made the soccer team down in Texas. Happy birthday to Michelle Liu and Utsa Santouth, who have back-to-back birthdays over in College Park, Maryland. And congrats Ron Wang,

who just got his first job out of law school in Manhattan. Go to Corner Bistro, get the burger, Jack and I love it medium rare. The burger used to be five bucks. I think it's like nine bucks now, but it's a really good burger. Inflation issue. Happy birthday to Helen Chang and Honolulu, Hawaii. And Vanessa Clark in Orlando, Florida. And Michelle Kaye over in Seattle, Washington. And Ethan, and Eagle, Idaho. And Amber Henderson and Jackson, Tennessee. And Joel Graham in Louisville, Kentucky. And a Rushi Agarwal in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And a big high five to our snacker friends in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Mucha braggado to the bam, to the bam. 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, 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.