The Best One Yet - 🛥️ “I’m on a boat” — MasterCraft’s starboard stock. OpenTable’s revenge dining. AMC’s monkey money.

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

MasterCraft, the boat company, just enjoyed its most profitable year ever, but it’s worried about 2 things: Golf and Netflix. If you can’t get a dinner reservation this weekend, it’s because OpenTable just told us restaurant revenge reservations hit their highest level ever. And Regal Cinemas just went out of business because it couldn’t get its hands on Monkey Movie Money.$AMC $MCFT $BKNGFollow The Best One Yet on Instagram, Twitter, and Tiktok: @tboypodAnd now watch us on YoutubeWant a Shoutout on the pod? Fill out this formGot the Best Fact Yet? We got a form for that tooLearn 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. It's Friday, the real Friday, September 9th, and today's pod is the best one yet. It's a T-boy, Nick. It's a total T-boy, Jack, what we got for our first toy today. Mastercraft, the wake surfing boat company just had its most profitable year ever. But this boat legend is worried about two things. Golf and Netflix.

For our second story, are you having trouble finding an open dinner-res this weekend? Well, Open Table just told us that Revenge Dining hit its highest level. ever. And our third and final story is Regal Cinemas. Just went bankrupt. And AMC did not. Why is that, Jack? Because AMC has monkey money. Regal has no monkey money. No monkey money. No monkey money. No happy times. But Yetis, before we hit that wonderful mix. Honestly, the perfect mix to go into a weekend with, Jack. After 70 years of service, Buckingham Palace announced yesterday that Queen Elizabeth II passed away peacefully at the age of 96. Surrounded by family and surrounded by her corkies. For 70, years, she was a force of stability. From empire to commonwealth. From EU member to not EU member anymore.

She reigned with grace the whole time for 70 years. That's through 15 prime ministers, by the way. Exuding calmness like an Elvis Dumbledore. And Britishness like a Mary Poppins. It is amazing how someone so far away could feel such a part of our lives. Great point, Jack. And our parents' lives and our grandparents' lives, too. Yeah, she bought her wedding dress during World War II. But get this, she paid for that wedding dress, with war ration coupons. And she volunteered in that war as a mechanic, aka the first female member of the royal family

to serve in the military. And to top it off, she perfectly raised 30 corgis. Because puppy. The only queen who could make James Bond look soft. And get mentioned in four different Beatles songs. And she did it all with her hand on the steering wheel of a land rover and a corgi on her lap. Yeah, it was a stick shift.

The new King Charles called her a, cherished sovereign and a much-loved mother. So, Jacks and my thoughts go out to our British besties out there. And the Yetis in the 14 Commonwealth realms. We are celebrating Elizabeth twins. We're toasting the Queen's triumphs. Jack, let's hear our three stories. 15 years before this song,

two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea that caused a cultural storm. It's the best one yet, but the best is anointice. 50% that's a fat tip. Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we've read to go. Wait no more, so just start the show. Start the show.

For our first story, MasterCraft, they make the boats that you wakeboard on. They just set another boat sales record. But the two things MasterCraft is really worried about? Oh, yeah. Golf and Netflix. Let's just get this out there. Check, not sweater weather yet. It's not sweater weather.

I'm wearing a V-neck t-shirt today, man. There you go. Double shorts sleeve. Yetis, if you got a birthday in September, that's a summer birthday as far as we're concerned. It's still pool weather. In fact, wire pools closing down at Liberty. Yeti's Mastercraft. They make the boats that like your one rich cousin had growing up.

I'm like, that's why you tolerated them. Yeah, the company is based in Venoor, Tennessee. Landlock State, but waterbound company. Taylor Swift, honestly, probably is like three of these Docton or Condo right now. Yeah, we heard she wrote the song Love Story on one of these things. It's not verified, but the odds are pretty high. Now, this is a manufacturing company. They make boats, not yachts.

You don't need a crew for these things. And no skipper. We're talking recreational power boats and, like, your party platoons, the stuff that you're going to have fun on. With a MasterCraft, you can do wakeboarding, you can do water skiing, stuff you get injured doing on a bachelor party with your buddy Timmy. Actually, Jack, I was like picturing both yours and my father-in-law as Matt and Claudio while we were crafting this story. That's what I'm picturing going too fast on one of these things.

My boat, my captain, my rules. Founded by a pro water skier, we're talking a $400 million market cap pure play water toy company. That is MasterCraft. a publicly traded stock. It does. But, you know, kind of like everyone you know who owns a boat, MasterCraft was showing off last quarter. They announced their seventh straight quarter of record revenues. And then they announced their most profitable year in their 54-year Tennessee history. They sold 34% more vessels this past quarter than the same quarter last year. And yet, MasterCraft stock sunk 13%. Because analysts, analysts are like a little concerned over here.

Analysts aren't sure there's as many records beyond the bow of Mastercraft as there are back behind the act. I like what you did there, Leo DiCaprio. DiCaprio? Titanic? Boter? Oh. That's a stretch, but I'll take it. Let's roll with it.

Apparently, dealers are buying fewer boats. And there's also signs that consumer confidence to buy a boat is dipping. Hold the sparries. That is going to hurt future sales. And that is the problem for Mastercraft. Oh, by the way, if you think you're... car gasoline bill is expensive. Don't even look at your boat gas bill. Oh, Jack, that is not a miles per gallon situation. That's a gallons per mile situation. Messes with your head, but it's true.

Yeties, this is what Jack and I found fascinating about the Mastercraft story. There is a more existential threat to this recreational water ski brand. I am DeCaptan now. So Jack, what is the takeaway for our buddies over at MasterCraft? Competition isn't just in the form of a company. Competition should be a mindset. Look, Bastie's Mastercraft, yeah, they face direct competition from some other boat brands floating around out there. But the highlight in their annual report that we focused on, they said we compete for scarce leisure time. Scarce leisure time. Because the biggest threat to MasterCraft isn't you buying a Boston Whaler instead.

It's you not boating with your free time. Let's say you develop a weekend golf habit. And you may not buy a boat. Or let's say your family develops a camping. Ripping ritual. Then you may not buy a boat. What if you'd rather spend your Saturday as Netflixing with an Xbox? That is an anti-boat activity jack.

Whatever you can do on a Saturday that's not boating, that's MasterCraft's real rival. Because competition isn't necessarily a company. Competition is a mindset. For our second story, OpenTable just revealed that restaurant bookings have surpassed pre-pandemic levels by far. The Revenge Restaurant Reservation reveals that, One thing is still missing. Okay, Jack, last restaurant we went to together in New York City. Mary Lane?

Yes, the trout. Oh, the trout. It was a good trout. But you can't get a reservation for two weeks. How about San Francisco? Right on DeViz? Nopa? The burger?

That burger's terrific. Can't get a reservation for a month. Good luck, dude. Yeties, if you want to eat dinner out right now, you're going to need to know a guy on the inside. There's literally a wait list for the wait list. Restaurants have put up the red digital tape. It is easier to get into the canned film festival right now than into like a cafe on the Upper East Side. Open Table.

Yes. Open Table is the oldest online reservation booking platform. They got 60,000 restaurants on their platform and they're owned by publicly traded booking holdings. From Bob's burgers to Thomas Keller's $300 prefix. They're doing everything from like bistros to brunch buffets. They do those reservations. So Open Table puts out data and the number of bookings they have is a proxy for the amount of dining out at restaurants. Because they're covering all those bistros and all those brunch buffets.

And they just put out the state of restaurants report that they put out every year. Okay, before we reveal the numbers, can you sprinkle on a little context here to the state of restaurant reservations during the pandemic? Well, in April of 2020, we were shocked to see in this report. Actually, we weren't that. We shouldn't have been shocked. But this was a big number. Restaurant dining fell by 100% in April 2020. You couldn't go to a restaurant and split a hummus.

That was a super spreader fiasco. It was illegal to book a table at a restaurant because of the pandemic. But OpenTable, that proxy for restaurant reservations nationwide, just gave an update to that restaurant report. Last month, we surpassed the number of bookings compared to the pre-pendemic era. In fact, this is the wild part. We're actually dining out 20% more today than we were in 2019. OpenTable just had a record number of reservation bookings by 20%.

Jack, that is not revoluting. spending. That is revenge experiencing. Well, you're right. It's not just happening in restaurants. Now, yet it is, here's what Jack and I find fascinating about this story. It's not just revenge dining that we're seeing going on right now. It's revenge experiencing across the board. Air travel last weekend also passed pre-pandemic numbers. Gym memberships this summer also surpassed pre-pandemic numbers. Concert attendance also passed pre-pandemic numbers, and that's not even including Burning Man. We're traveling out. We're working out. We're rocking out. More than we ever have.

Oh, pause the pod. Jack and I, we're going to Disney, baby. It's the post-pandemic world, and we're doing the things we used to do even more than we used to do them. And yet there is one huge part of our pre-pandemic lives that still appears to be way down today. Yes, there is. Feels like a takeaway moment. Jack, what is the takeaway for our buddies who are everyone in the U.S. economy? The big question for this fall, will offices return to their pre-pandemic levels? Yeti's, commercial real estate is still feeling like a half-empty olive garden out there. Yes, it is.

Workplace occupancy rates, they're averaging just 44% in cities this summer. Jack and I have been going into the office, but that data point, it shows that offices are the one part of your pre-pandemic routine that's still not quite back. Every other daily routine is bigger than it was before, except going into the office. Which leads to this key moment because this is the big moment for the return to office movement. Post Labor Day, post-pandem. September 6th, it was circled on bosses' calendar. It was the day bosses were finally going to ring the dinner bell and tell all their worker bees to come back home. Okay, yetis, we got restaurants, airports, concerts, and gyms.

They are all busier than ever. We're talking revenge experiencing. The biggest question for this fall, what about offices? Now a word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. You can do just about anything from your phone, but some industries, they've just been slow to move. The finance industry was slow to move from phone to computer and then from computer to app. Robin Hood wasn't. It's the Silicon Valley-based brokerage that's been updating app since it was born in 2015. Using the Robin Hood app for your stocks and crypto is almost as easy as downloading it.

So you can invest to your pace on your terms by downloading the Robin Hood app. If you're not investing on Robin Hood yet, to get started, go to robinhood.com slash T-B-Boy and choose your free stock. That's Robinhood.com slash T-B-O-Y limitation supply. Stocks are offered by Robin Hood Financial LLC, member SIPC. Crypto offered through Robin Hood crypto. All investments involve risk. By the way, this podcast is not owned by or part of Robin Hood, and we are not employees of Robin Hood.

For our third and final story before the weekend, Jack, Jurassic World or Lost World. Oh, neither. I just want the old school Jurassic Park, man. There we go. You nailed it on the first try. Third and final story. Regal Cinema shows what happens when you're a movie theater chain, but you don't have meme investors.

What happens is you go bankrupt. Yadis, when it comes to movie theaters, the pandemic was really, it wasn't a single whammy. It was a double whammy. The theaters had to be closed by government order. Whammy number one. And there was a surge in in-home movie streaming.

Yeah, that's whamie number two. So Cineworld, the owner, of Regal Cinemas, where you may have watched a movie, is buried in debt right now, and yesterday they declared bankruptcy. Now the company is protected from who it owes money to, but it can keep operating while the judge decides what the heck is going to happen to this company. The beauty of bankruptcy. Well, Cineworld, they happen to trade in London on London Stock Exchange, and their stock has

fallen 99% like a tragedy on that double whammy. The hope now is that Regal reemerges with a restructured company. Some people are going to lose money, but it gets to start. a new post-bankruptcy life as a company. As JJ Wentworth said, bankruptcy, it's not the end, it's a new beginning. Yeties, you know the big tech industry. You know big food. You know big beer.

Well, big theater is an industry too, and there's two key players. Yep, you got Cineworld and you got AMC. Jack, Cineworld, they are number two. Cineworld owns Regal movie theaters, and they have 9,000 screens global. AMC, on the other hand, they're number one. They have a tad more screens with 10.5,000 global. But they're pretty close. They're both pretty close to each other. These companies are very similar. They both yell at you to turn off your phones before the movie's coming on.

They both charge like 12 bucks for dipping dots. If you want a medium sprite, that'll be 114 bucks. But one of those movie theater chains just declared bankruptcy, while the other movie theater chain is living its best life. And the way Jack and I see it, the one difference between these two big theater companies is, of course, The Apes. AMC, it's a beloved stock from investors with millions, of common man investors who would take a bullet for this company.

Yeah, AMC faces all those exact same double whammy market challenges that we mentioned that brought down Cinewer. But AMC is not at risk of bankruptcy because they just created a new form of currency. AMC just created monkey money. Movie monkey money. Movie monkey money by AMC. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our two big theater buddies? The secret weapon saving AMC right now?

is monkey money. Yeties, just a few weeks ago, AMC invented a new security called the ape, which stands for AMC preferred equity. But for short, you can call it an ape security. Right. Ape also happens to be the nickname for the amateur investors who saved AMC stock. And this new ape security, it's basically a collectible. It's like an NFT. It's a, it's a fun thing to own. It is. It's an NFT. It's like a digital trading card saying you own part of the company. Well, AMC created a whopping one billion of those ape securities. They created a billion bills of monkey money. And they're going to sell them to their loyal ape investors.

So if AMC runs low in cash, which you probably will because the movie theater business is still down, it can just sell this monkey money for real money. Riegel, on the other hand, they can't just make and sell their own monkey money because they don't have a loyal ape fan base like AMC has. If Riegel tried this, Wall Street would be like, what the hell? heck are you sell them. AMC, though, they got a secret weapon that's helping them thrive and avoid bankruptcy. It's thanks to the apes. They can make and sell monkey money. Monkey movie Mike. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us for the real Friday? The pandemic was

basically one big boat parade and Mastercraft loved it. But competition, it isn't just a company, it's a mindset. For our second story, open table data revealed that restaurant bookings are more than 100% back. But the biggest thing not back to normal Right now is your office. Our third and final story, while regal cinemas declared bankruptcy, AMC has thrived. Because AMC has a loyal troop of apes, it can sell monkey money too. Movie monkey money. Now, time for the best fact yet, and to close out the week, Jack and I wanted to whip up one special for you.

This Sunday is the 21st anniversary of September 11th, 2001. The worst attack on American soil in history. I was in middle school in Vermont. Honestly, I didn't totally know what was happening until I got home and saw my mom. I was in the Bronx, and you could literally see my mom. and you could literally see the smoke coming up from lower Manhattan. So we were confused, but you could see it, you could smell it. On a day that is too horrible to forget, we often all wonder what can we do?

Okay, so the fact Jack and I wanted to whip up for you is that 9-11 isn't just a day to look back. It's also a day of service. That's right. It's a federal, national day of service. It's a whole day to do something, a thing, like one thing, a small thing doesn't even have to be a big thing. But it does have to be something that benefits someone else. someone else. So the way we see it, Yetis, celebrate some wins this Saturday, but then give something on Sunday. We can't wait to see you back next week on Monday. Jack, it is great to be back with you. Yeties, have a fantastic. And before we go, after seven years of long distance,

Drew and Surrey just got engaged in Dublin, Ireland. Congratulations. And congrats to Sean and Zora, who just got married in Chicago on Sean's birthday. Doing logistics. And Cody Klug and his fiance, say they're getting married this weekend in Duluth, Minnesota. And a huge happy birthday to Emma Gardner, the Middlebury Panther, the OG from New York City. Right down the hall. And happy birthday to Robert Trey over in Las Vegas. And happy birthday to Tracy Ike in Houston, Texas. And Pedro, Belignia, Andre Carvalo, is turning 37 in pesos de Brandau, Portugal. And Alex Apple, we know you're driving right now.

Yeah, we know you're commuting from San Jose. Two hands on the wheel. 10 and 2. Yeah. Thanks for listening to the pod. Happy birthday. and Laurent Playsman is turning 30 in Roslindale, Massachusetts, just outside Boston. Happy birthday to Seamus, who also just got married and Hinghamas.

And David Baer, VP of operations at Bears' furniture selling a whole lot of Tommy Bahama Beach chairs, is turning 39. This is Jack. I have a butt that's looking for a chair to sit in. This is Nick. I'll take one too. This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix, and Nick and I both own stock of Robin Hood. Now a word about our sponsor, Robin Hood. Jack, rule number one about a kitchen renovation, tell your friends about your kitchen renovation. We know the cabinets are expensive. Well, in the pandemic, a lot of companies renovated their businesses focusing on apps and digital.

Robin Hood didn't have to. It was built digital from the start. Robin Hood's mobile first and intuitive design makes investing a little easier for every stage of your investing journey. Whether you want to trade options, ETFs, or stocks through Robin Hood Financial, or buy some Bitcoin on Robin Hood Crypto, you can do all that right on the Robin Hood app. If you're not investing on Robin Hood yet to get started, go to robin hood.com slash T-Boy and choose your free stock. That's Robinhood.com slash T-B-O-I. Limitations apply. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member SIPC, all investments involve risk.

By the way, this podcast is not owned by or part of Robin Hood. We are not employees of Robin Hood. You know what, dude? For a Vermonter, I've had like no venison in my life. Oh, that's funny. I can't even remember having vines. It's awkward to have venison. I've had reindeer.

That's appalling. That is a crime against Christmas. Can we turn off the mics, actually? This just in, the T-Boy pod host ate Santa.