The Best One Yet - 🥇 “Goldmine or Landmine?” — NBC’s Super Bowlympics. Hotels’ Bling Bleisure. PayPal’s eraser.

Episode Date: February 7, 2022

NBC snagged both the Olympics and the Super Bowl — That sounds like a goldmine, but really it’s a landmine. PayPal just had its worst day ever on Wall Street because it’s become a stock eraser. And the surprise winner of the travel industry is… extended stay hotels. $MAR $PYPL $CMCSA Got 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. Welcome back. It is Monday, February 7th. I got my Wardle in four tries. You got your wordal fun. Did you use a do?

Did you start with a do this time? No, no. I started with a house. Can I buy a vow? One of these days you're going to start with a do. I'm impressed, Jack. Took me five today. If only TBLY was a five-letter word.

If we can add an exclamation point, why isn't an exclamation point of letter? Today's pod Snackers. It's the best one yet. It's a T-B-O-Y. Jack, what's our first story today? NBC has both the... The Super Bowl and the Olympics in the same month. Boom.

What do we call it, Jack? We're calling it the Super Bowl Olympics. Now, this should be a gold mine, but it may be a landmine. For our second story, PayPal Stock had its worst day since becoming a stock. PayPal stock has been erased. For our third and final story, there's one area of travel that is beating all the others, the extended stay. Snackers, Bleasier Travel is already here.

Bling, Bleasier Travel, is coming. But Snackers, before we hit that wonderful mix of digestible stories. Perfect. Mix the stories to kick off the week, Jack. I love this mix. You know how it goes. Hortes Almanac, week 98. Yeah, things are running out of because of the pandemic.

Jack and I have been keeping track for you. This week, we're running out of snow. Snow, literally. The mountains near Beijing, they have zero snow. Zilch. This is the first ever Winter Olympics without a single flake of natural snow. Jack and I, triple fact check this. We're talking 100% artificial fluff.

That's all they got. Now, the shortage, it's not a supply chain issue or something. Good point, Jack. The snow isn't stuck on some cargo ship over in the North Pacific. We have a shortage of snow in Beijing because of a precipitation problem. Jack and I aren't meteorologists, but we can say that Beijing is the Sahara Desert of Blizzards. It really is. But the IOC, they went with Beijing.

Jack and I jumped in snack style, and we discovered that Beijing only gets 0.3 inches of snow every winter in the China capital. That's zero snow days. We're going to round down on that one. It's great if you're trying to commute, but it's bad if you're trying to luge. You know, Beijing should have asked the Canadians to B.YO. Snow. Hey, Iceland, bring your ice land. Instead, the Chinese authorities imported enormous amounts of water, froze it, and manufactured huge dumps of powder to spread across all the trail.

Can it scale? No, I don't think that can scale. Snackers, if you're still shoveling out from last week's epic Texas to Maine, snowstorm. Then you've got a surplus of something in the hoarder's almanac. That's something to be proud of. Yeah, let's plow 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. The 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. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood finance. LLC, member Fenbara slash SIPC. For our first story, NBC got exclusive coverage for the Olympics and the Super Bowl simultaneously. Is this a gold mine for NBC's parent Comcast? Or is it a land of mine? First of all, Jack, in the age of streaming video, can we talk about the only live video that matters at all? I had YouTube TV for four months just so I could watch the NFL on Sundays.

Live sports. It's the only thing that matters. in a world of streaming. And the two biggest international live sporting events of all, the Super Bowl and the Olympics. Yeah, NBC, they got them. Both of them. Same month. We're calling this the Super Bowl Olympics.

Plus, NBC has already sold out of their Super Bowl ads. For 30 seconds, they sold for $7 million. Yeah, you're seeing a puppy, a baby, and Lindsay Lohan. That cost $7 million. Pinch yourself, NBC. Oh, magic. Make sure this isn't a dream. That is just so incredible for NBC.

But now let's turn to the hard part. Please. It's not the media coverage, it's the logistics. The Super Bowl Olympics are a media dream and a logistics nightmare. Because let's bring in our buddy, Mike Tarika. The new Bob Costas. Yeah, he's the master of ceremonies for NBC covering both the Olympics and the Super Bowl in this exact same month. This Syracuse educated sportsman is in Beijing right now, but he's going to fly back to Los Angeles for the Super Bowl.

Yeah, the rest of NBC staff, though, they're going to be covering the Olympics from here in the United States. That's the strange twist. China's zero COVID policy is insanely strict. Oh, totally strict. There are pictures of bartenders over there wearing hazmat suits. It looks like a scary movie. So here's the concern. If a single one of NBC staffers like get seen coughing, they might get stuck in Beijing like Tom Hanks in the terminal. Which leads to this wild situation. Instead of flying 1,500 NBC staffers over to Beijing to cover the Olympics, NBC has made them nocturnal for the month of February. The job posting required that you sleep during the day and are awake at night. That is right. Snackers, get this. These staffers are going to stay in the United States, but they're working Beijing hours. Jack, how far? Beijing's like 13 hours away.

It's as far as it gets in terms of the clock. Yeah. You dig through the earth. You get to China kind of an accident. So that NBC sports staff that's over in Connecticut, they deserve some ceremonial team USA medals. We think so. Oh, but guess who just starred in the opening ceremony? he's on frag. Walking down the red carpet, you got Vladimir Putin and President Xi of China. Meanwhile, the White House and several U.S. allies are boycotting these Olympics. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies covering the Super Bowl Olympics over at NBC? This looked like a media gold mine, but it's really a landmine. Yeah, Snackers, the upside for NBC and its owner Comcast is really small, but the downside is potentially huge. Even if NBC scores a 10

out of 10 on their coverage of these Olympics. Will Americans even care? A recent axiose poll suggests Americans are net negative on these games. Seven out of 10 Americans disapprove that China is hosting. Six out of 10 Americans can't even name a single athlete. And only five out of 10 Americans plan to even watch these Olympics at all. So when it comes to these Olympics, there's nobody to please, but everyone for NBC to anger. Americans are hungry for attention on China's human rights abuses right now. Jack and I were both watching opening day, and NBC did acknowledge what the U.S. is calling China's genocide of the U.S. and it's crushing a pro-democracy movement. But that kind of coverage from NBC could be a problem for their sister company, Universal Pictures.

Totally. This is where things get complex because like after the games, China could punish NBC by banning the next Fast and the Furious 14 movie in China. Because Comcast owns NBC and Comcast also owns the Fastest. in the Furious studio. So the way we're seeing this, it looked like a gold mine for NBC, but the Olympics is more of a landmine. For our second story, PayPal, it just suffered its worst day ever, like absolutely ever for the stock. Zoom, Peloton, and PayPal, they're the eraser stocks of 2021. Okay, first of all, PayPal, this is the OG of digital payments worth $150 billion. We're talking about 10 lifts over there. That's more than Goldman Sachs or Citibank. Now, here's the thing,

PayPal in digital payments, it's supposed to be a gross stock. They're supposed to displace cash money so that in a future, everyone's PayPal. Jack, that sounds so growthy. But when we got PayPal's earnings, their revenues grew only 18% last year. And PayPal thinks revenues are going to grow even less this year. Oh, and we jumped in snack style. The number of people who used PayPal monthly, that only rose 13% last year. That includes the ridiculously popular Venmo app.

Oh, and PayPal added 60 million. new users on average the last two years, they're only expecting 20 million new users this year. PayPal has itself a pay problem. Yeah, it does. You're doing less PayPal. And honestly, like, PayPal just never became a verb. That sounded awkward to say that. I don't even know what I did.

So after those brutal top line results, PayPal blamed everyone. In fact, Snackers, let us know if PayPal didn't blame you. All right, first, PayPal executives in the earnings call blamed eBay. PayPal used to be part of eBay. They were spun off, but they still do some. work with eBay. Not anymore. eBay is using a different payment processor now, and that hurt PayPal's growth by 10 percentage points. That's a lot of percentage points. Oh, and after PayPal blamed eBay, then PayPal blamed the entire U.S. economy, Jack. Executives acknowledge that stimulus money has run out.

You got the supply chain. You got shortages. You got labor pains, inflation. Add up all the buzzwords and PayPal execs say that means you're not going to splurge to get that slam and salmon golden sweater. you're spending less, you're using less PayPal. And finally, PayPal blamed some fraudsters, some shrewd fraudsters. This one's the most awkward. PayPal spent a bunch of money to get a whole bunch of people to sign up for PayPal accounts. You've seen these before. $10 of free cash if you sign up for PayPal now.

Jack, I think it's $10 a free cash to sign up for PayPal right now. They kind of yell at you. Now, PayPal didn't clarify that you had to stay. Yeah. So the CFO of PayPal was kind of embarrassed to say what happened when people, did that promotion. Four and a half million accounts were set up illegitimately, his words. They took the $10 and bounced. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies? Paypal and over at PayPal. 2020 sent pandemic stock soaring. 2021 was the great eraser. You got Zoom, Peloton, PayPal. They all enjoyed

explosive growth thanks to stay-at-home forces for two years. It all got erased. The stock prices of each of those three companies is now shockingly below or close to. to below their pre-pendemic prices. And Snackers, those entire stock surges were erased because the numbers for these companies, they just don't look like growth numbers anymore. Let's get back to PayPal's key growth metrics we mentioned at the beginning. Okay, so Jack, first, they had 18% revenue growth, and then they had 13% user growth. That's just not very growthy.

Not very growthy. If the era of growth is over for PayPal, Wall Street's not going to treat you like a growth stock anymore. Boom, PayPal stock lost a quarter of its entire value in just a few hours last week. Worst day ever. Two entire years of PayPal stock power were simply erased. It's now one of the eraser stocks. For our third and final story, Jack, did you want to drop your in-law joke for this one or the in-law's listening? Well, I know they listen. They're the biggest supporters of snacks daily Here is the third and final story. There is one area of travel that is thriving in the pandemic and it's thriving right now.

The extended stay. The extended stay. We have a new profit puppy in hospitality. Okay, Snackers, when you hear extended stay, you're thinking of like your crypto buddy Chris who's been an Airbnb in Tulum for eight months now and won't stop talking about it. Or you might think your in-laws are staying for a five-day Thanksgiving weekend. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But extended stay, the extended stay.

the extended stay experience is actually something a little more like this. I don't want to sign a lease, but I also don't want to pay a crazy rate every night for a hotel. Historically, extended stays were like a construction worker or someone newly divorced who just needed a place for a few months. And then early on in the pandemic, it was big for first responders, like a nurse who had to go to Houston for a COVID outbreak and needed a place for a couple months. But today, extended stay is looking a little different. Extended stay demand, it shifted from necessity to aspiration. Remote workers who are tired of like working from their town that they're bored of looking at extended stay to do a little work in business. And that's why Blackstone and Starwood Capital just dropped a whopping $1.5 billion to acquire 111 extended stay hotels. That's after Blackstone already acquired a chain called extended stay for $6 billion.

Oh, and Jack, we've got Marriott's earnings coming up next week. They have a few chains that specialize in extended stays and they're expected to be a bright spot. So here's what Jack and I found fascinating about extended stays. Extended stays are the new profit puppy of hospitality. The average room makes twice as much profit per dollar as a typical hotel room does. Get this. First of all, extend stay hotels, they don't have to pay for as much staff. People are only checking in for like every couple weeks.

So you need fewer front desk workers. Oh, and they don't need as much windex. Housekeeping only happens weekly, not daily. They'll need to like mini shampoo bottles. You know, it's like BIO shampoo, right? I think so. And they don't need to pay for a fancy lobby. If this person's sticking around for a few months,

you don't need to impress them with a plush carpet. I've never been to an extended stay hotel, but they definitely don't have the like Belgian waffle things, you know, the flippers that everyone likes at the hotels. It's B. B.Y.O. Baker. Yeah, there is no whipped cream. And there's no alarmingly consistent scramble bags.

You only scrambled eggs that are both solid and liquid. According to the Wall Street Journal, hotels in general had a brutal 2020. Occupancy was just 48%. But get this, the revenue for extended stay hotels, that only fell 6% in that awful year. Extended stay hotels were resilient throughout the pandemic. Oh, totally. One private equity executive said that extended stay hotels are like an ATM with a roof.

We'll leave the light on for you. Yeah, you will. And you're going to print some cash. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in extended stay hotels? The next phase of bleezer is bling bleasurer. Snackers, we've talked to you before about bleisure traveled, business. plus leisure when you combine both those things into one fantastic trip. You're not staying a weekend in the Mahamas.

You're staying five days. Work Wednesday and Thursday, long leisurely weekend after that. Well, here's the thing. The travel industry, they know you're doing that, and they think that that trend is here to stay so they want to make it even more profitable. That's why some extended stay hotels, they're getting a little fancy.

We're seeing early signs of bling bleasier. AKA is an extended stay hotel. It's a little nicer. It's 400 bucks a night. I saw one in Philadelphia, Jack. This thing looks like a spa. AKA wants to feel just as nice as your house is, but not as crazy expensive as a hotel has to be.

Because Snackers, once a trend becomes standard, then it becomes premium. Bleasier has become standard. So look out for bling bleasier. Jack, can you and those snow tires whip up the takeaways for us over there? Studded snow tires to you. I'm sorry. It was a trick question. NBC struck gold with exclusive rights to cover the Olympics here in the U.S.

But right now, it's looking less like a gold mine, more like a landmine. PayPal was a pandemic thriver. Now it's a pandemic diver. It's joining Zoom and Peloton as the stocks that got erased in 2021. Extended stay hotels are a pandemic thriver. And they're still thriving. Yeah, it's thanks to Bleasier, but it's kind of becoming blingbleisure. Now, time for our snack fact of the day.

This one's sent in by Will Shane from the Bay Area, but currently living in the Netherlands. Hey, Snackers. Did you know that Maya Angelou was once the first black woman to conduct a San Francisco streetcar? after being denied even a job application, her mother encouraged her to return and insist on an interview, and after two weeks of waiting every day

in the Muni offices, she was given one. Because she was only 16 at the time, she lied about her age on her application, but succeeded in breaking a boundary for countless black women to come. Thanks, and happy Black History Month. Adding another bullet point to Maya Angelou's resume. Snackers, if you got a snack fact for Black History Month,

send it in. We want to hear your voice. We've got a form right here in. today's podcast. Thanks for snacking. We'll see you tomorrow. Can't wait. And before we go, we got a Valentine from a snacker, Anastasia. Will you be Alexias Valentine? Congratulations to Allison, who just got into both MIT Sloan and Harvard Business School. Someone's got to make a decision. Allison's going to be just outside of Boston either way. Can't really go wrong on that one. And congrats to Akash Bougage, who just got promoted in Paramus. And Miguel Uriarte, who just got a new job over at a Tesla factory.

Congrats to Isabel, who got a new gig at Amazon's HQ2. And Daniel and Brenda Prado, congrats on getting married over in Paramount, California. Happy birthday to Amit Kumar Day in Kolkata, India. And Malik Khan, enjoy the birthday in San Diego. Happy birthday to Ethan. Whose birthday we missed last year? We absolutely blew it.

Ethan, we got you next year too. And to anyone else celebrating something today, make it a T-Bol. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack. Nick and I both own stock of Pelton and I own stock of Amazon. Robin Hood Snacks, newsletters, and podcasts reflect the opinions of only the authors who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and do not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets, Inc,

or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. They are meant for informational purposes only and are not a recommendation to buy or sell any security, cryptocurrency, or investment strategy in any account. This is not an offer or sale of a security, not a research report, and is not intended to serve on the basis for any investment decision. Any third-party information provided therein does not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets, Inc., Robin Hood Financial LLC, or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal and past performance, does not guarantee future results.

Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. Why is it an exclamation point a letter?