The Best One Yet - 🍿 “Game of Fixed-Up Thrones” — AT&T’s media retreat. Equinox’s tribrid. Corporate mask-fusion.

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

AT&T’s $150B experiment in media is over, now that it’s spinning off GoT to Shark Week. Equinox’s fancy gyms could become Equinox fancy stock… with a “tribrid” (not hybrid) strategy. And the CDC’s latest mask update has created something companies never expected: The 5th layer of public health. $T $DISCA $DIS $NFLX $IPOFGot 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. T-Boy Tuesday, May 18th. Elon tweet? Bickwin up. Elon tweets again.

Bick on down. Nick, it's a busy day. This is the best one yet. I gotta get to the story. T-B-O-Y. Jack, what did we got for the first story? AT&T didn't dabble in the media business. No, it did. They splurge.

They dove-head first $150 billion worth. And now they're selling it all in the biggest media anti-deal of the year. For our second story, Equinox. Could be a $7.5 billion towel company, in my opinion. really could, Jack. Nick, they're plentiful. They're soft. I may have grabbed one and accidentally left it in my duffel band. Is that a tower or is that a robe? We love these things. Now, the fancy gym just told us the future of fitness isn't hybrid workouts. It's tri-brid workouts. Try like three, not try like a attempt. Very interesting. Third story, what do we got, Jack? The CDC updated their mask policy last

week. Big move. The states are, the counties are, the cities are too. Funny thing Jack and I noticed businesses just became the fifth layer of government. But Snackers, before we hit the those three great stories. Wonderful mix today. Last week, we told you that Ben and Jerry's had their most innovative year ever. Jack, I had to double check these numbers. They launched 40 new flavors, a record in 2020. So naturally, we asked if you could turn your 2020 into a Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor, which we all would. What would its name be and what ingredients would it include? 2020, you should have been a Ben and Jerry's flavor. What was it? All right. We got some fantastic responses from the Snackers. Snackers didn't disappoint. A lot of good answers here, Jack. We spent like two

hours on Twitter, like going through the thread. Here's a runner-up honorable mention. Yes. The pandemic peanut butter from Andy Reyes. Yeah, this is a peanut butter flavor that would come in two types, chunky or smooth. But when you buy chunky, you actually get smooth. And when you buy smooth, you actually get chunky. Because 2020, a year of disappointment.

Brutal. The actual finalist, though, the four finalists for the 2020 Ben and Jerry's flavor. First, we got isolating latte from Kimberly Chan. This is cold brew coffee ice cream with. Chocolate covered espresso beans in there. Jack, because you've got to help yourself stay awake if you're going to watch all these shmovies every weekday. I watched 80% of Netflix last year.

So that was option number one. Finalist number two was Marza Pandemic, a flavor from Rob Boucher. This is Marzzy pan ice cream with marshmallow toilet paper rolls and caramel-filled cocoa stimulus checks. Jack, the rich, just got richer. Yes. Now, our third finalist is Bada Bing, BadaZo from Tony DeRosa.

So the ice cream flavor is Bing Cherries, a real thing. with chocolate tiles in all those ice cream. This ice cream was engineered so that as you eat it, your Zoom goes on mute so people don't hear your gross chewing. As you devour the pint, you cannot talk. The final finalist, social distance deletje from Ritesh ready. Okay, here's how this goes down. It is a plain vanilla ice cream with nothing else mixed in it.

That's it. A Ben and Jerry's pint isn't six feet in circumference. There's no room to socially distance. Those ingredients, they follow the rules, Jack. They're doing their part. Snackers, those are the four finalists for the 2020 should have been a Ben and Jerry's flavor. Vote for the winner of the 2020 should have been a Ben and Jerry's flavor on Twitter with our poll out there right now. Winner gets a T-B-O-I, the best one yet, Robin Hood Snacks T-Shirt. Vote at Robin Hood Snacks. It's T-Boy Tuesday. The poll's there right now. We'll see you there.

Jump on to Twitter. Let's hit our three stories. You're tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. For snacks about the hearing food is 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 of a security.

Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, 18T's wildly huge experiment in entertainment, It is over. They are spinning off Warner Media, merging it with Discovery. That media failure.

Definitely a failure. It was aggressive words. It cost AT&T $93 billion and six years. It's the time. The time is the painful part. It was a bad relationship. I'm giving AT&T a pat on the back for ending it. Honestly, someone needs to give these guys a hug.

In the meantime, AT&T is also walking away with $43 billion for giving up its movies. It shows and its shmoving. It's a lot of movie shows and shoe movies. HBO, Warner Brothers, TNT, TBS, CNN. They're all owned by AT&T, and they're all getting spun off and merch. Snackers, if you're an AT&T shareholder, you're going to get 71% of the future merged company. The name, TBD? TBD.

Probably going to have a plus or a max involved in that thing. Definitely not a minus. No, definitely not. The other 29% is going to be owned by Discovery. You know Discovery. Which is home to cable TV guide staples. Jack, can I give you a serving of HV. TV, maybe a little bit of food network?

No, thank you, but I'll take the TLC and the A&E. Mom, where's the remote? The home of the Shark Week, need we say more. Investors are kind of excited because Discovery is probably going to merge their streamer, Discovery Plus, with AT&T's streamer, HBO Max. And Jack, you know what that means. I know what you're thinking over there. What's it mean?

It's going to mean the Game of Thrones plus the Fixer Uppers shows. We're thinking crossover opportunity? Game of Fixed U Thrones. Now, that could compete with Netflix and Disney Plus. Jack, I got a six-bedroom, Kings Landing. It's lovely, loud neighbors. Dragons are allowed. We should point that out. But we're going to mix this thing up. Surprisingly spacious dungeons. Other opportunity here, of course, is Lanister cooking show with Bobby Flay, but we'd watch either of those.

That's enough, Nick. Now, in honor of AT&T's failed media efforts, we're going to frame AT&T's media history in movie terms. We're basically going to launch their IMDB page. And this is why I love doing this with you, Jack, because the IMDB page for this deal, you got to start with the director. Who's the director of this failed situation? Former AT&T CEO, Randall Sevenson. And then you got the cast, which begins with DirecTV, which AT&T bought in 2015, and then sold part of it to a private equity firm. There's only two cast members, actually. The other is Time Warner bought in 2018 and sold yesterday in the spin-off to discover. And then you got the budget. It was huge. Okay? They spent a combined

$152 billion on this media experiment by acquiring DirecTV and acquiring Timewater. So that was the cost. But then you got the box office, the revenues, what AT&T made. They've brought in $59 billion, Nick, in the two sales that they've announced so far this year of DirecTV and Time Warner. Okay. So we got the budget, the box office. Jack, add all this up. What were the reviews like for this experience? Pretty simple math. Negative. AT&T has lost $93 billion. Yeah. By experimenting by buying these two companies. So AT&T's 4A intermediate destroyed about how many lifts worth of value, Jack? Six lifts worth of value.

93 billion dollars is the difference between the buying price and selling price. For AT&T, this was a worse experiment than Russell Crow and Le May Ms. Yeah, man. So Jack, what was the takeaway for our buddies over at AT&T? The loss to AT&T was even greater than the money we just described. It was the focus, the lost focus for six years. Snackers, huge opportunity costs here. If AT&T hadn't tried to do all the stuff in media,

they would have been focused on their core competency, wireless. And that's important because in fast evolving, fast transforming industries, focus matters more than scale. Media right now, it's going through like cord cutting, you're fighting streamers, you got YouTube, you got like Fortnite doing media. It's a mess. Wireless is wild too. They have a once-in-a-generation transformation with 5G wireless.

Instead of just competing against Verizon and T-Mobile and Comcast and all these other companies. AT&T's former CEO, he decided he also wants to compete against Netflix and Disney and YouTube, et cetera, et cetera. And guess what, Snackers? We can see AT&T's errors in AT&T's stock price. We look back to July 2015 when they made the first of these two acquisitions. Since then, AT&T's stock is down 8.5%. But over the same exact period, the rest of the market is up. 100%. AT&T's media experiment dropped their stock while the rest of the market doubled.

For our second story, Jack, pull-ups or push-ups? Can I say both? That was the correct answer. Yeah. Equinox, it's fancy gyms. They may be going public. I could only do six pull-ups these days. I'm going to round up to 10. That's fine. In my prime, I can do 12. Well, the future of fitness, Jack, what do you think it is? It isn't hybrid. No, it's not. It's tribrid. I saw you do 24 once. Well, it depends if your palms are in or out, you know? I've spotted you more than I've co-recorded this pod with you, Jack.

Snackers, Equinox for the uninitiated is the Canada Goose of Fitness. And the New York City-based gym chain once famous for the racy ad campaign featuring sweaty squatters that kind of scared me. Do you remember that ad campaign? Yeah, I had to sit down, stand up, and sit back down again. It made me uncomfortable. They're always famous for the pletial gyms, the $200 a month membership fee. And the eucalyptoscented Asai Bowls, which are not included. No, they're not.

dollar a month membership fee. If you know, you know, Jack. Equinox is reportedly chatting to go public on the stock markets via a spec, an evaluation of about $7 billion. They were founded 30 years ago, still 100% physical gyms with like the spa treatment five. But since the pandemic, like every other gym, Equinox has offered some sort of an online streaming option too. But here's what Jack and I find fascinating about Equinox. Equinox doesn't think the future of fitness is like hybrid online offline. They don't think it's just that. They're adding a third thing, outdoor. They're calling it tribrid fitness.

That's right. Tribrid, not hybrid, tribrid. The new thing is called In the Wild. Their term. Which is a concept starting in New York where they're putting gyms on like the rooftop of an Equinox gym or just in a vacant lot. And it doesn't end there. We notice that Equinox owns nearly 100% of SoulCycle.

And guess what they're doing with SoulCycle? Putting them outside. They are. 20 SoulCycle Studios fully outdoors. Jack, full disclosure, I saw one of them. live last weekend in Marin. I'm a big fan of doing like a hit class in 100% humidity because you'll sweat hard and it's natural. Now, I just got to point out the one thing missing from that outdoor soul cycle, you don't get the votives, Jack.

No candles there. You know, the sun is known as the biggest candle in the galaxy. Well, without the votives, it messes with my vibe. No, Snackers, Equinox has also launched recently at home bikes with streaming classes and a workout app. All of this sounds extremely peloton. Now, we jumped in Snacks style because we were curious. to see more. And their app, we noticed, basically mirrors everything going on at their physical gyms. They have meditation classes, kickboxing classes, even a Tom Brady endorsed recovery workout.

They do. But then we jumped in snack style further and actually signed up for the sculpt, ab lab core workout class just to get a sense of what this looks like. It looks like a sci-fi video. It's extremely high production quality. It's like James Cameron directed the workout. Was this thing filmed on like a SpaceX rocket? Probably because it's $40 a month to access this app, which is very expensive. That is four times Apple Fitness and over three times more than the no-bike Peloton app option. Snackers, let that sink in. This fitness app is $40 a month.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Equinox? Pricing is marketing. That's right, Snackers. The choice of a price, it actually says as much about a company's brand as their logo does. When Equinox launched their app, they could have priced it two ways. Equinox could have priced this app low, like five bucks a month or free, because everyone wants a digital workout option right now. And if their app was free, they could have built a loyal, huge audience that is thankful mid-quarantine for this free service. And maybe that goodwill could have translated to real memberships and gyms after the pandemic.

Jack, I love the way you put it. But instead, Equinox decided to make the world's most expensive fitness app out there. By embracing exclusivity, just like their gyms. Basically an exclusive club business expanded to an exclusive app. The pricing is the marketing and the app doesn't come with the towels. For our third and final story last week, the CDC decided no masks if axed in a business. Which means this week, all of the nation's retail chains are having to reach their own decision about masks. Jerry, we need six lawyers ASAP.

Now, the CDC, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. I don't know what happened to the P there. Continent Haste. They issued guidance on Thursday that's caused quite a bit of uncertainty. Yeah, a little bit of mask fusion going on with some businesses right now. The CDC said that fully vaccinated Americans can ditch their mask. Yeah, they can. Indoors and outdoors with a few exceptions.

No distancing either if you're fully vaccinated. The problem here, the CDC's guidance depends on the honor system. Yeah, it does. So like if someone's not wearing a mask when you roll up to the McDonald's, basically it's going to mean one of two things, and these are going to be very extremely different things. It means this guy with a McFlurry in his hand who's not wearing a mask, he's either fully vaccinated and is simply following the CDC's latest guidance. Or this McGrittle guy is not fully vaccinated and is flunting the CDC guidelines. And companies have said they're not going to ask for your vaccination card to prove it.

They're going to rely on the honor system too. And as of Saturday, only 47% of American adults have been fully vaccinated so far. We still got a long way to go. So this honor system stuff, it could be kind of scary if you're in there and people aren't wearing masks. Which led to a funny thing that Jack and I noticed over the weekend, every major retail chain had to clarify if CDC rules changed their mask and social distance policies. First, you got club, take off the mask. You can walk in, you're not wearing a mask if you're hidden to Target or CVS, doing a Walmart run, Costco Starbucks. You can be mask-free if you're fully vaccinated.

But again, that policy depends on the honor system. Jack, on the other end of the spectrum across the street, can you take us over to Club mask, please? So far, the major chains that have clarified, you must still wear a mask, even if you're fully vaccinated. That's Home Depot and Gap. They're like, for now, please continue wearing a mask. Jack, it's a Saturday errand run. It's 2 p.m. Let's say you got a few things on the list.

For example, you got to grab some cauliflower and yokey over at Trader Joe's. Are you going to need a mask? No mask necessary. Okay, maybe you want the real cauliflower. So instead, you go over to Krober. Okay, check the list. You must wear a mask at Krober. Now, Jack, after all this mask, I've got a mask in the situation.

I need a new night cream. so I head over to Alta. Do I need a mask? Awkward. The place where masks most interfere with the business, a makeup place, you must continue masking up. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are all of us customers across America? Corporations have become the fifth layer of public health. Snackers, another wrinkle of confusion here. Four layers of public health rule makers are existing during the pandemic. You got the federal government. Yeah, you do. The CDC. Yes, Jack. They got the state, like Vermont. The county? Chittenden County. The city or town? Burlington. Vermont. Four layers of government. It's like onions. But there's now also a fifth layer of government.

Corporations. The ones who set the quote unquote laws in their jurisdiction, which is their stores. Businesses can require masks even if their locality doesn't require it. But it's not the other way around. They can't not require masks if the locality says you got to wear masks. Which means businesses are running many governments within governments. Now we're seeing businesses become the fifth layer of public health. Responsibilities that honestly, Starbucks probably wish it didn't have. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us for T-Boy Tuesday? While the rest of stocks doubled, AT&T stock has shrank the past six years. Because of a failed media experiment and because of lost focus.

Equinox is the nation's high-end gym chain. They could become a publicly traded stocks. Pricing is marketing. And they price their app like they price their memberships. Really high. Really high. The assae. Third and final story, to mask or not to mask?

That was the question for retail chain. last week. And businesses, they've become the fifth layer of government during the pandemic. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by Nishant Guard from lovely San Carlos California. Miriam Webster added the word non-fundgible token, aka NFT, to the dictionary. We're on fung still, by the way, Jack. Now, NFTs, honestly, it's kind of a boring definition in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. I thought I was just going to say, it's a token that's non-fundable. That's probably what the first draft was, but then they extrapolated a bit. NFT is a unique digital identifier that cannot be copied, substituted, or subdivided, and it's recorded on the blockchain.

So Merriam Webster turned their definition of an NFT into an NFT. And they're like, can you use that in a sentence? They're like, no. And now they're like auctioning this thing off, no joke. The NFT of the NFT definition is being auctioned off. Yeah, it's on Miriam Webster's page, $17.65. Jack, our podcast NFT? Not for sale.

priceless, baby. Snackers, you'll look fantastic today. If you haven't yet, go to at Robin Hood Snacks on Twitter to vote on who should win the Ben & Jerry's 2020 flavor. Should have been a Ben and Jerry's flavor. Should have been a Ben and Jerry's flavor. We'll see it about. And before we go, happy birthday to Snacker Harper, turning two over in Coltineck, New Jersey, young snacker. And happy birthday to Robin Yovianto in Sunnyvale, California. And to Emily Levine and her cute baby dog Rudy in Jacksonville, Florida. And to Jackret in San Diego. And Alonzo Fullenboilder in Wilmington, North Carolina. And happy double birthday to Blake Luckin and Victor Las in Austin, Texas.

And to David Verpool in Haley, Idaho. And Victoria in beautiful Toronto, Canada. And Nicole Berggreen in lovely Scottsdale, Arizona, home of the self-drive. And Cooper Schoon-Taller in Arlington, Mass. Oh, and by the way, Jack, Alejandro Tehran, first anniversary of his startup in La Paz, Bolivia. Fantastic. Congrats to Susan King, whose first baby is named Virginia.

Great name. But they both live in Cleveland, Ohio. And Cassie, meanwhile, is fostering a baby in South Bend. Indiana. Congratulations. Happy anniversary to Diana Brandon Cummings in Mount Prospect, Illinois. Oh, Jack, we're keeping Illinois here. Mike LaChance birthday in Evanston, Illinois. Home of Ari Gold. Well, Armani lives in Chicago and loves snacks daily. Armani, I love logistics. This is Jack. I own stock on Netflix and Nick and I are both Pelotonese to shareholders. 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.