The Best One Yet - 🧣 “New Taylor, who dis?” — T-Swift’s re-record album. Casper’s acquisition ghost. Shell’s royal split.

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

Taylor swift just took her music back in a way we (and the 3 big record labels) haven never seen before: The Great Do-Over of the Red Album. Casper Mattress was just acquired by a private equity firm, but will its ghost haunt an entire business model forever? And Royal Dutch Shell is pulling a Justin Timberlake name-change… because splitting into 1 is how you split into 2.$CSPR $SONY $WMG $UVV $XOM $CVXGot 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, Tea Boy Tuesday, November 16th. One trillion dollars. There we go, baby. With the tea. The trillion dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill just got signed into law.

Congratulations to all the roads, all the bridges, and all the highways listening to this podcast. You are getting a makeover. I'm a bill. I'm a bill. And I'm cruising over a brand new bridge. Perfect timing because today's pod is by far the best one we've ever done. It's the best one yet.

TBOI, for our first story, Taylor Swift is taking back her music in a way we have never seen before. And we're calling it the great do-over, unprecedented. For our second story, Casper Mattress just got acquired by a private equity firm. So is the ghost of Casper now going to haunt every single direct to consumer startup, I don't know, ever? For our third and final story, we're looking at Royal Dutch Shell, which is combining into one company so they can cleanly split into two companies. Come again, please. Drop the Royal Dutch. Just go with the shell. It's cleaner. Wonderful mix. I'm so pumped to do this pop. Honestly, this is a fantastic mix for a Tuesday, check.

But Snackers, say it's Friday and your face deep and some nachos. Okay. Maybe you got a cocktail. It's the weekend. You're excited. You got the mozzarella sticks. Maybe a mezcal mark. Why not? Hey, what's going on here? What is it? Oh, it's my phone. You're getting a text. It's your vice president of accountant. The VP of accounting? What is the VP of accounting want, Jack? Can you email me the presentation for Monday's meeting? Stat by EOD.

Excuse me? The VP of accounting, my boss wants a presentation on a Friday night? Actually, no. No. Your boss doesn't because the country of Portugal just made that kind of conduct from bosses illegal. Snackers, here's the news at a Portugal. The country just banned bosses from texting or emailing you after hours. It's illegal.

40 hours a week, that's it. If you go after, you're in trouble. Yeah, late night work requests, they are verboted. Micromanaging is a microcrime. If a company has 10 or more employees and contacts to it, like, I don't know, like 5.01 p.m., they could get hit with like a fine. You could get hit with a $500 violation for unbalancing the sacred worklife balance. Jack, let's say you get a 4-am text demanding that you print out a TPS report.

What's going to happen? That's third-degree management slaughter. Yeah, brutal. Snackers, they will pay a price. Portugal's new work-life law, it's actually part of a new trend. It is right to rest. your license to chill. The only thing that should ruin date night on Friday after 5 o'clock is like bad bot sticks.

Yeah, not the VP of accounting. What's at our three stores? Happy T-Boy Tuesday. It snacks about the hair ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the Robin Hood 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. Robert Her Financial, LLC, member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, Taylor Swift is re-recording her music. She's what? She's re-recording the recordings of the original recordings so that she can own the real recordings.

It's called Taylor's version, literally. And it is making the suits pick. Taylor Swift, by the way, maybe the most productive artist of our time. I don't know how she does all the things she does. Like a small army in one human being. During the pandemic, she wrote, sang, and published not one, not two, three albums that were all huge success. What did you do during the pandemic? Like, update your LinkedIn?

I'll tell you, I finally updated my LinkedIn resume. That's what you did. Basically, you made your first sourdough. She went platinum. She's worth $550 million. But Taylor Swift still has a big problem. She does. She doesn't own the music from her first six albums.

That's right. When Taylor was 15, she signed a deal with her record label. which was a business partner, but has become a fault. Years later, that label sold her music to a guy. She says she deeply dislikes Scooter Braun. Taylor Swift accuses Scooter Braun of years of incessant, manipulative bullying as the owner of her music. She says that he even told her in 2019 that she couldn't sing her music live at the AMAs

because he owned her music. So she's been trying to buy back the rights to her first six albums, but they haven't been willing to sell them back to her. sit down, stand up and sit back down again because Taylor is taking back her music in a way that we have never seen in this industry. We're calling this unprecedented display of power the great do-over. Yeah, the great do-over because first, well, she broke up with her old label and she signed a new deal instead. Yeah. And in this new deal, she owns the rights to any music that she creates. But now she is re-recording all of her old music going back on the microphones

singing what she sang 10 years ago. She is singing and songwriting new albums? Yeah, she is. While at the same time, re-recording her six old albums from the past. From Love Struck Romeo to Marry Me, Julia. Song by song, she is taking back her music. Boom, this weekend, Taylor dropped a new album, read Taylor's version. It's the same album with the same lyrics and the same melodies as the 2012 original,

which was all about breakup. It's got all the details, including the subtle. references to Jake Gillingham, which we all kind of were curious about. She didn't stop there. Then she was the performer at SNL on Saturday. And she dropped a 15-minute music video, which she calls a short film on YouTube. Very productive. 10 million views per day since it got published. Yeah. Again, what did we do this weekend? By the way, did you watch music video? You see that 10-minute video? I did. Okay, I did not expect the argument in the middle. Young Taylor in the video is a girl from Stranger Things. Not L. Not 11. Another girl. But Snackers, now, we've got a show.

We have got a showdown. And here it is, which album are you going to listen to? If you go on to Spotify or Apple Music or Pandora or whatever, you're going to still see the old versions of Taylor's songs that have been on your streaming platform for years. Yeah, like the old version of Love Story owned by the labels, feels kind of dirty to listen to. But now you're also going to start seeing more and more of Taylor's version of the same song that's been re-recorded, it's been done over, and Taylor owns them. And Jack, after just one weekend so far, what are the results we have between the old version of Taylor's songs and the new version of Taylor's songs? Taylor's version of the Red album was number one globally this week on both Spotify and Apple.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddy, Taylor Swift? I feel weird saying that. What's the takeaway? She could inspire a new wave of artists, what we're calling the My Music artist. Snackers, what Taylor ultimately wants is the master recordings. of the recording copyrights. That's the master. And here's some words from the late, great prince.

If you don't own your masters, your master owns you. And that's because the balance of power in this industry has been with the producers for the last century of music. The reason artists like Taylor when she was 15 sell their music ownership to labels is because the labels control distribution in music. We're talking Sony music, universal music, Warner Music, in return for owning the songs,

they get you on the radio, on to the playlist and hopefully get you big and famous. But Taylor Swift just signed a deal with a new label and she still owns her music in that deal. Yeah, it's my music. Other artists could start to say, it's my music and demand ownership in their record label deals too. Because the balance has shifted away from the record label gatekeepers to the individual music creators. So big music, like those three record labels, they need to adapt to the my music artist. For our second story.

Honestly, did not think we were going to wake up Monday and see this, Jack. Casper Mattress is getting acquired. I was surprised, too. Casper, the mattress, not the ghost, is now a ghost. Full disclosure, we're both, although it's also kind of still alive, but it's dead. It's kind of a weird thing. Either way, Jack and I, full disclosure, sleep on Casper mattress. Casper pioneered the mattress in a box.

Yeah, it's like a queen bed just pops open like a magic show. You know, have you seen? You love that. Queen bed, cute kid. Sorry, who funded this, David Blaine? You cut open the vacuum seal bag and it just goes, it's like a technology invented by the illusionist. Before you know, it's gone from like a dense thing of cotton to a full king-sized mattress.

So the shocking news, Casper Mattress, the Darling One startup, has been acquired by a private equity firm. It's actually the same PE firm that owns Bojangles Chicken. Yeah, they own a fried chicken company and now they own a direct-to-consumer mattress company. Because when you eat the fried chicken, you need to take a nap after. So, Jack, I know what you're? thinking, did they pop some bubbles? Are they jumping up on the beds over a Casper mattress? What kind of numbers we're talking about over there? Kind of. The stock jumped by 100% yesterday. There we go. On this news. Yeah. The stock basically doubled in a single day because of this announcement.

Casper was worth by market cap, $140 million before the news, but it's getting bought for $280 million twice its market cap. This is like it feels like an upgrade. Upgrade from a twin bed to like a California king. But Casper still has a problem. Casper's stock is being put out of its misery. Snackers, this isn't the situation you expect because Casper Mattress was basically dead. When Casper went public with their IPO about two years ago, the company was worth $575 million.

Today, after this acquisition news, Casper Mattress is worth only half of what it was two years ago. When Casper was private, it was a unicorn before their IPO three years ago worth $1.1 billion. Today, after the acquisition news, Casper Mattress is worth only a quarter of that. So it's been all downhill for Casper for a few years. Yes, it got acquired for double the price of the stock. But Casper Mattress is still a fraction of its former self. If Casper looks in the mirror, it doesn't see itself.

Casper's kind of dead. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Casper mattress? The big question, will the ghost of Casper haunt the whole direct-to-consumer industry? Snackers, Casper, it was one of the first major direct-to-consumer startups to go public. But this year, we've seen like a whole bunch of direct-to-consumer startups go public. Warby Parker, honest company, rent the runway, just to name a few. So here's where those direct-consumer stocks are wondering, should they be worried about Casper's stock's awkward death?

We don't think so. Because although all these companies have the same direct-to-consumer business model, Casper's product was fundamentally different. Here's the thing, Snackers. You buy a mattress once every eight years on average. And when you do, you're just buying like one or two of them. And when you do, Casper needs to get your attention. Or they've lost you as a customer for almost a decade.

And they're battling with like 500 mattress companies these days and dozens of cheap Casper knockoff. So Casper has had to splurge a whopping 25% of all the money to make. They put it right back into ads to get their next customers. And that's why you hear a mattress ad on every single podcast. Because if you didn't hear a mattress, mattress, mattress coupon code, Was it even a podcast? So the deepest issue with the stock and the reason the value sank so low,

it was the deep core unprofitability of mattresses with no light at the end of the tunnel. So we don't think Casper's ghost is going to haunt the whole direct-to-consumer industry. For our third and final story, oil giant royal dutchell is splitting into one company in order to split into two different companies. We saw the same thing with General Electric, Johnson and Johnson, and now Royal Dutch Shell. Yes. They're all thinking about splitting

so that they can split more. By the way, shell, I'm just going to throw this out there, even though I know we're both driving electric. My favorite gas station sign, I like the shell. I think it's a nice visual. So my buddy Dave growing up, his dad owned a shell station.

You're kidding me. And it had a subway sandwich station in the shell. Double dip. I got free soda from the subway. It sounds like some kind of a violation of some kind. Actually, we should point out, the Sinclair, the Sinclair oil with the dinosaur, that's actually the best sign. I'm not familiar with that one. It was in Toy Story.

Anyway, Royal Dutch Shell is moving its headquarters from the Netherlands to London because it wants to become one company. That's right. Royal Dutch Shell, it's Anglo-Dutch. They used to have London and Amsterdam separately trading stocks. But now they're just doing London. Yeah, now they're ditching the dual citizenship. and Shell will pay corporate income taxes just in the United Kingdom because they're a little lower. Also, Shell is simplifying their name.

They are. Instead of Royal Dutch Shell, they're just Shell. Yeah, they're pulling a Justin Timberley. Cut the the, the. They're dropping the Royal Dutch. So Snackers, the world's fourth largest oil company is a little less royal and a lot less Dutch. Is that it? Anything else going on?

No. Oh, nice. This split isn't just about corporate structure. It's also about corporate strategy. Yeah, Snackers. Like everyone flinging oil these days, Shell is under pressure to transition to clean energy. Part of Shell's business is to scale up renewable energy like wind and solar and to scale up lower carbon fossil fuels. And we're seeing the same thing happening with other oil giants, the same pressure like at Exxon, at BP, at Chevron, at all of them. But now that Shell has a much cleaner org chart, it's easier to split Shell into two companies, dirty shell and clean Shell.

So Shell just became one company so that it could more easily become two different companies. Two different companies with two different stocks. That's what activist investors are demanding of Shell. Perfect transition for a takeaway moment. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Shell? The sum of Shell may be worth less than its parts. Snackers, imagine a clean shell, a fast-growing, clean-focused, green energy-loving, new shell. Some investors would love that stuff.

stock. I might even love that stock. It sounds exciting. But I'm less interested if it comes with Shell's dirty oil baggage. Okay, Jack, so now also imagine a dirty shell. This would be like, you know, its oil business is declining, but boy, that oil, it is still a very profitable business. Somebody's got a grandfather who lives in Houston, Texas, and he wants that stock. Yeah, they do. But not as much if it's bundled with the clean energy stuff. So some investors want the future focused shell, but some investors want the profit puppy focused shell. While splitting shell into two shells may create more value than it is today as a single shell. And it's the same reason why we've seen old school General Electric and Johnson & Johnson also split up in the past week. Same thing.

Shell may split because the sum of the shell is worth less than its parts. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us for T-Boy Tuesday? T-Swift is re-recording her old music. six albums to take them back from the label. Taylor, she could kick off a trend of other my music artists. For our second story, it wasn't a good run for Casper Stock, so it's being taken private. But we don't think that this is going to haunt the other direct consumer startups. And Shell just cleaned up their org chart. Maybe they're going to split into two now.

Yeah, because the sum of the shell is worth less than the parts of the shell. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. sent in by Savannah Westwood, who just sends in fantastic snack facts from Orlando, Florida. Here's a jam. She really gives it 110%. She really does. And her roommate's great at these two. Coca-Cola, they've set a lot of records in their day.

Like most soda sold? A lot of stuff like that, like along those lines. For soda and space, like the good stuff. But here's a record that they don't get enough credit for. Yeah, Coca-Cola actually invented the six-packed. That's right. Coca-Cola was the first beverage to be sold in packages of six with a convenient little handlebar balancing the whole thing out.

Which is key. And today you hear a six-pack. Maybe you're thinking beer or something like that. But not the case. Really was Coke. Do you know the thing that came first in a one pack? Pepsi? Water.

Is that an ancient history joke? Yeah, it was. It was like a caveman joke. Okay, there we go. All right, it works. All right, Savannah, I hope you appreciate that we elaborated on your joke. Was the best one. Snackers, you look fantastic today.

And remember, if you're listening to this pod before 9 a.m. or after 5 p.m., you should not be getting text from your boss. Do not disturb, or it's a microcracker. If you know, you know. Nick and now, I'll see you tomorrow. Can't wait. And before we go, congratulations to Snacker Carrie Anna Lamasters, who just launched a cookie startup called Tower Treats down to Atlantic.

Honestly, it looks delicious. Happy birthday to J.R. Houston, who is in the Navy stationed right now in San Diego. Thank you, J.R. Houston. And happy birthday to Dusty Winko over in Great Falls, Virginia. And happy birthday. Sabrina in Miami, Florida. And legendary stock trader, Allie, turning 25 over in New York City. Happy birthday to Josephine, down in lovely Newport Beach, California.

And happy birthday has met her Def Kota over in Boston, or just outside of Boston. Happy birthday to Rushby! Who's hanging out by the water cooler down in Dallas. And Hillary, over in Dallas, too, in the HY, HYSD shirt, is also having a birthday. Maricio and Camilla have been together for 10 years. Happy anniversary down to Miami. celebrate that win. This is Jack. Nick and I both own stock of Spotify and Nick own stock of Apple. 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 as the basis for any investment decision. Any third-party information provided therein does not reflect the views of Robinto Market Inc., Robinton Financial LLC, or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates.

All investments involve risk, including loss of principle and past performance, does not guarantee future results. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA, SIPC. It was in Toy Story? Anyway,