The Best One Yet - “Got 99 problems, but payments ain’t 1” — Square’s Jay-Z desire. GE’s Obi-Wan Kenobi product. Discovery’s SharkWeek+.

Episode Date: January 5, 2021

Word that Jack Dorsey’s Square is talking to Jay-Z about acquiring Tidal isn’t the most shocking thing we’ve ever heard, now that we’ve digested it. General Electric’s stock has one great final hope: A fan that’s as big as the Empire State Building. And Discovery jumps into subscripturation, but it’s got the QQE recipe.$SQ $GE $DISCAGot 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 Tuesday. Tea Boy Tuesday. January 5th. I got a feeling, Nick. This is the best one yet.

Jack, I got 99 problems, but payments ain't one. For our first story, five days into 2021 Snackers, we already have, shockingly, the potential acquisition of the year. As I get this, Jack Dorsey Square wants to buy Jay-Z's title? What? I'm Ron Burgundy? For our second story, General Electric Stock has one final great hope. Jack, we're looking at a wind turbine that's, you know, about as big as the Empire State Building. Not bad.

That's an 853-foot takeaway you got there. This stock depends on it. Third and final story, Jack. Finally, you can watch Animal Planet without subscribing to an expensive cable bundle. Creative name here. They're going with Discovery Plus, the latest and final entrant to the streaming wars. Your move, lifetime. Your move.

go and make it happen. But Snackers, before we jump into that wonderful mix of stories, you may have noticed that Slack went down yesterday. First day back to work from break while working from home, so you try to go to work virtually, but Slack won't work in reality. It turns out Slack actually lost $8.2 million from outages just like that all last year. When Slack doesn't work, they have to offer credits to customers because they're paying for Slack, but they can't slack. Yeah, so Slack going down first thing on a Monday morning, that was kind of bad. But also kind of awesome?

Full disclosure, personally, we were both very delighted by this moment. I was thrilled that Slack was down yesterday morning for a couple hours. So Jack and I took some time, whipped out the old whiteboard and decided, you know what, Slack? We have got a proposal for you. Here's what you do. Once per month, Slack should purposefully shut down its service. That's right, Slack, go down on purpose. We even came out with a name for this, roaming.

slackouts. Roaming slackouts. Let the outage of Slack happen. Yes. Give remote workers an unexpected hour or two off. It forced the in-person workers to go talk to their actual coworkers in real life. Better yet, schedule these outages ahead of time so we can be prepared for them. Make Monday morning outages a best practice for Slack. You thought Slack was losing millions of dollars because of outages like yesterday morning. But thanks this idea, Jack and I cooked up, now Slack will gain billions of dollars of gratitude from slackers who need a break. Slack it forward slack with roaming slackouts. Let's hit our three stories. You got it, Stuart Butterfield. You're tuned into snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. It's 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 of a security. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, Payment Processor Square, may be interested in acquiring JZ streaming service title. This is according to PFWTM, not people familiar with the matter. No, no person. No plural on this, Nick. This is a single guy, but we decided to build a story on it. Actually, honestly, this story dropped

like when Jack and I were celebrating Christmas, we were texting each other, we almost had to do a surprise podcast on this. We spent like two weeks thinking about why Square might acquire title, and we're going to talk about it right now. We came up with a decision like literally 30 minutes ago. So Snackers title, you may know title,

you may not know title. Title's kind of like the, it's the sixth wheel and music streaming. They're fighting in the backseat with Pandora, Nick. Yeah, basically. They're the sixth spice girl, spicy spice. That's how it works.

Back in 2015, Jay-Z, the entrepreneur and the musician, he found an opportunity to acquire title, the streaming service for like $10 a month, for $56 million. And then he shared it with a bunch of his artist friends. So it's actually artist owned. You've got like Coldplay, Madonna, Rihanna, they all own a piece of title.

Everybody's got a few buddies who subscribed the title. For me, it's my little brother who claims that the music is higher fidelity on title. It's true. On title, you can hear Rihanna hitting notes that only a hummingbird can actually hear. Now, the last time, title publicly announced

subscribers they had was in 2016, when three million people were paying for title. All right, so Jack and I got to sprinkle a little context on this thing. Spotify has 140 million paying subscribers. Title, last we heard, three million. So title is tiny. They've also experimented a bit with live streamed video of concerts from the musicians on title. Yeah, they pulled off like 120 of these, including Rihanna's live lingerie fashion show, which doubled as a type of concert. But this would be an interesting marriage if it actually happened, because Square is the opposite of title in so many ways. Yeah, if you look at what Square's been up to lately, it's a payments platform that is living its best life in 2020. Square started at your local farmer's market so that you could buy

squash? Squash? Squash. With a credit card, even though the farmer obviously doesn't take credit cards. They had those adorable farmer's market dongles, and then they expanded on to other things like cash app. They're famous for the cash app. Right. Venmo's edgier cusion. And they also have those little white touchless card things so that you can buy a latte without actually touching anything. Which is the best way to buy a latte. So if you check out the Square stock, this thing has tripled over the last year basically just because of the pandemic. Nick and I were shocked to see that Goldman Sachs, the biggest, like most famous Wall Street Bank, is worth less than Square, a tech company trying to do

finance. All right. So you got Title and you got Squaboard. They're living opposite lives, and you've got one person who claims that they may have an interest in each other. It's not just that one PFWTM, though. No, it's not. A bunch of paparazzi have given us evidence that the two top men in this deal have been getting together recently. Turns out back in August, on a yacht in the Hamptons, you had Jay-Z, Beyonce, and the CEO of Square, Jack Dorsey hanging out. A few months later, just this past December, Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey were playing touch football on a beach and why, along with Beyonce, and Sean Penn.

Sean Penn was there, because, yeah, you got to have an even number. You got to have an even number for these games. But Snackers, every acquisition speculation like this one is like a murder mystery. You have to have a motive. Perfectly put. Why would Square want to buy title? That's the key. Nick and I thought about it for two weeks, and this is what we came up with.

Well, first of all, Jack Dorsey isn't just the CEO of Square. He's also the CEO of Twitter. So he sees that people engage and stick with media content. Also, Square has done some, like, creative stuff before. They used to own food delivery app caviar, not part of their core business, but kind of cool they experimented with that. Jack Dorsey, the head of Square, is also on the board of Disney for the past four years, so he gets entertainment.

All right, so we're trying to figure out what's going on here. Like, would restaurants that use Square get access to title music so they could play the music for customers without a copyright issue kind of a thing? Maybe, but we actually have a better idea. We do, Jack. What's the takeaway for our buddies over at Square? Square is trying to achieve the ultimate brand move. Turn from a utility product into a lifestyle company. Snackers, do you care about your master card? Your PayPal account? Do you even, like, bother about the $10 bill in your pocket? Nick, when I buy a slamming salmon sweater every Tuesday, I don't even care what credit

card I'm using. They're just numbers I'm throwing in. So Jack and I are thinking that maybe Square thinks your cash app payments, their peer-to-peer payment app, could embody your values and attitude instead. On cash app, maybe you can pay back a buddy for gas and then tag gasoline by Daddy Yankee as the soundtrack of that transaction. Your buddy Timmy would like that. Well, similarly, we noticed that Square just recently launched Cash App clothing. That's right. Peer to peer payments, clothing, fashion. That's right. We looked into it. It's like Vanilla Ice and Uniclo had a sweatpants baby. That is the cash app clothing. That's what this thing actually looks like. And what they're thinking here is that you're going to want street clothes with the logo of your favorite payment app on the pants.

That's a bold ambition and something you could only pull off if you became a lifestyle company. So Jack and I are thinking that if Square acquired title, that would be perfectly aligned with what they're doing with clothing. They could bundle music streaming with usage of the cash app, maybe. Boom, exclusive Beyonce album drops only if he used Cash app five times in the last month. If you're a power user of Cash app, you get free title streaming music. And that, would make Cash App a lifestyle brand. For our second story, General Electric has shrank by half in the last five years. But it's brand new giant wind turbine hasn't, and we think it's GE's only hope. Jack, General Electric, always gets awkward when we're talking about General Electric.

Basically, amid corporate life crisis, it's getting kind of ugly over there. We don't want to pick on GE, but they used to be a corporate A-lister for like a century. Gee, what happened? You were a member of the Dow Jones and Dye? Industrial average. It was great. For a century. Yeah. Remember, Jack, we were in middle school? Everyone was talking GE. When we were in middle school, GE was the most valuable company in the world. It was the Apple of 2002. Full disclosure, my grandfather worked on turbines at GE after World War II and loved working on those turbines. Full disclosure, GE's former headquarters, Schenectady, New York, has the coveted zip code, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Jack, we're dropping snackbacks too early on this thing. But Snackers, GE was a big deal because airplanes, to light bulbs, to microwaves, to media, they did it all. It was a conglomerate's conglomerate. But mismanagement of the company over the past like 20 years, it got noticed by Wall Street. And now GE sits at the kids table. Get this, GE stock down 70% in the last five years. Instead of making everything like they used to, a humbler GE now makes four things. It makes four things.

Jack, you want to whip them up for us? Power generators? Nice. Airplane engines, sexy. Healthcare machines, like an MRI or an ultrasound. Very good. And renewable energy. Renewable energy.

So Jack and I think that GE thinks that renewable energy is their only hope. We think it's their Obi-1 product is this giant new wind turbine. Help us, Obi-1. Their only hope. GE just unveiled Snackers, the biggest wind turbine ever. It's called the Halliad X. That's right. Halliad X.

This thing is 853 feet. It could arm wrestle the Empire State Building. It's that big. This thing is Netherlands, but on deer steroids. Yes, it is. And for $100 million, give or take another $100 million, you could plop one of these Halead X wind turbines in an ocean miles offshore from a local beach. That's right. This is an offshore wind turbine. And then it's football field-sized blades. No joke. Catches the wind and transforms it into electricity. All right. So you've got a clean, mean, juice-making machine here.

Produced in France right now, but they could open plants in the... United States and the UK soon is the idea. That's if sales of this thing pick up. And we think maybe they will because one revolution of this windmill will power a UK home for two full days. Let that sink in. One spin of the wheel powers the home for 48 hours. Nick, this one turbine could power the awesome city of Burlington, Vermont entirely. Entirely. The whole town. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over General Electric? We are at the start of a green rush for clean energy. Snackers, companies are pledging to go carbon neutral, and that is the big potential business for General Electric. Amazon, carbon neutral by 2040, Microsoft, carbon negative by 2030,

even BP, the big oil company promises to go carbon neutral. All right, so you look at all those promises right now, and also like every company that spacked itself in the last six months, Jack, and it means they're going to need clean energy, and wind is one of the best options out there. Guess what, Nick? Only three companies make these big wind turbines. Yeah, we're talking Siemens, some random Danish company, and then General Electric. The Danish company is called Vestis. And if companies fulfill their pledge to become carbon neutral, GE's wind turbines will be key. Imagine a Microsoft wind farm just off Puget Sound.

Imagine an Amazon wind farm just off Puget Sound. Add in the Biden administration, which could also boost support for all these types of renewables, particularly wind. a green rush for clean energy starts at GE. And it's GE's only hope. For our third and final story, the newest edition to the streaming wars and maybe the last, Discovery Plus. Discovery Plus launched yesterday. Yes, it did. Also, can we just get one streamer? Just one streamer to stop using the plus sign? What's it going to take? I feel like Discovery and would be exciting. It's like,

oh, what's after the and? Asterisk, hashtag, what about exclamation point? Discovery. Discovery! Discovery! Snackers, Discovery Communications. Not a credit card company founded in 1985. IPO, so publicly traded since 2005. Right. We're not talking about the Discovery Card. That's a different thing. We're talking about Discovery Communications, which has Food Network.

Classic. Animal Planet. HGTV. TLC, own the Oprah Winfrey Network, even then, of course, the Discovery Channel itself. Interesting about Discovery. All of these channels are loved worldwide. These are like very international-friendly program. Jack, if you were homesick, maybe a case of the strep throat. If your mom gave you a remote, you are watching Discovery Channel shows. True. Why don't you just pop on 90-day fiancé, extreme makeover, the deadliest catch, Shark Week. Jack, by the way, rename the streaming service, Shark Week Plus.

Boom, that's the idea. That's what you go with. Chicken soup for the binging soul. We're talking the shows that are the comfort food of cable. Now, Discovery Plus finally launched yesterday for $5 a month. Yeah, so it's showing up, basically, like give or take the set. seventh inning of the streaming wars right now. And because it's showing up so ridiculously late, it faces the problem of subscription. Snackers, subscription saturation. Subscription saturation. When you just you got too many subscription, there is a limit to how many subscriptions you can have.

Here's some stats, boy, Snackers. 70% of U.S. households subscribe to at least one streaming video service with the average subscribing to three paid video services. All right, so Jack and I jumped in Snacks style. Turns out your average family that's doing one of these streaming packages, they're spending a $29 a month on all that video stream. That's about a third of a typical cable bill, so you're still saving money, but it's getting up there. Jack, remember when Timmy used to run our cable bill? And Dave audited his spreadsheet every month before paying. It led to the monthly argument of East 14th Street that everyone could hear. So figuring you might have streaming video fatigue, especially in the wallet, Discovery Plus is partnering with Verizon to make sure it gets

50 million subscribers, because Verizon gives away for free. Yeah, apparently. Verizon's giving away everything for free. Don't you get Disney Plus for free, Jack? I got a Verizon phone plan. I get Disney Plus. I get Discovery Plus. If I get a better phone plan, I'll also get ESPN Plus and Hulu. It's a funny thing Jack and I noticed about Discovery. They have an extremely humble goal when it comes to launching Discovery Plus. The CEO must be from the Midwest because this is his quote about his ambition for Discovery Plus. You ready, Nick? He wants Discovery to be the perfect companion to every household streaming portfolio. That's right. He didn't say we want Discovery Plus to be the number one streamer. Yeah. They want to be the perfect companion. They're just happy

being subscribed to by your family. If you're talking about us, that is great. We're not trying to win anything. We don't need any fancy treatment. Not showing off. Not falling behind. The meaty part of the curve. The meaty part of the curve. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Discovery, exclamation point? QQE. Snackers, that is how we suburb. That is how we sublimating. We subscription service can avoid subscriptionation. QQE, that's quality, quantity, and exclusivity. We almost had ex-cus lividi to make it three Q's, but it didn't work. Quality, quantity, exclusivity.

Those are the keys to determining whether a new streaming service gets cut or it actually gets watched and people keep paying for it. All right, so when Jack and I are looking at all the streaming options out there, Netflix and Disney, they've kind of got QQE down. I mean, Netflix has like 700 episodes of Chef's Table out there right now. They've totally got QQE down. There's three years of bingeable content just about the Windsor family. There is.

And Apple TV Plus and Prime Video, not the same case. They're kind of lacking when it comes to the QQE. Discovery Plus, on the other hand, they have no buzz. Like you barely even heard about this launch yesterday, but they may have the QQE factor of success. All right, the QQE is the quality, the quantity, and exclusivity. Let's look at the quality for Discovery Plus. Get this Snackers, TLC, HGTV, and Food Network.

Those are the number one cable networks. among different demographics of women in the U.S. Jack, how about the quantity for Discovery Plus? It's got 55,000 episodes. That sounds like a lot. So, Jack, how about the exclusivity for Discovery Plus? Bobby Flee and Giata, cooking in Italy only on Discovery Plus. Perfecto. QQE is how a subscription service, like Discovery Plus,

can avoid subscriptionuration? Jack, I miss saying this, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? There is a rumor reported by Bloomberg that Square might acquire title because Square wants to become a lifestyle brand. For our second story, GE's 853-foot wind turbine is how a bunch of companies could become carbon neutral. Help us, giant wind turbine, your GE's only hope. For our third and final story, Discovery Plus just launched 13 years after Netflix did. And it may just have the QQE recipe to avoid subscriptionation. Now, time for our snack. fact of the day, this one's sent in by Tony Nash from a lovely, snowy Buffalo, New York.

Nick, you keep on telling me about all these Michelin Star restaurants in the city. You're the one who's saving all the money with these, like, Verizon subscriptions over there. It's so can I, I can afford these Michelin Stars. That's where you're going to go on at the big date night. Now, originally, Michelin Starred restaurants were created by the founders of the tire company Michelin in France. Here's what they were trying to do. They wanted you to drive, so they were highlighting restaurants so you would drive to them. them. Yeah, so they would give them these Michelin Stars, and today those Michelin Stars are going to the top restaurants in the world. But back then, when they launched their original Michelin Star

Restaurant Guide, one star meant worthy of a stop. Two stars, two Michelin Stars, meant it was worth a detour. Three stars, the highest rating, meant worth a special trip. The world's most important restaurant ratings all came down to a tire company. Snackers, before we go, happy Tea Boy Tuesday. We missed you and we would love if you'd ask your friends, H-Y-H-Y-S-D. Have you had your snacks daily? We are so glad to be back on the pod. Can't wait to see tomorrow. If you know, you know. And before we go, Snackers, big happy birthday to Irene Skopaletti in lovely Calabria, Italy. And happy birthday to Shravin Patil in Yadupi India, who's got a dog named Jack great name. Yeah. Apparently he loves it with her. This is Nick. This is Jack. The dog loves it.

He's great on the timing. And happy birthday to Jackson Brown in South Bend, Indiana. And happy to your anniversary to Aurora and Ben in Richmond, California. And happy birthday to Thomas Cow in Palo Alto. And Connor Bray's in Lake Forest, California. This is Jack. I own stock of Spotify, Volkswagen, and Amazon. Nick owned stock of Square and Apple.

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.