The Best One Yet - “Pivot to puppies” — The Dodo’s pet insurance. Halliburton’s oil shovel. Walmart app-ifies its aisles.

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

Partially-owned by publicly-traded Discovery Inc, The Dodo is known for adorable 3-minute cat videos — but now it’s launching pet insurance. Energy legend Halliburton is selling shovels to an oil goldrush that isn’t getting rushed into. And Walmart is bringing its app to life… as a store (1,000 of them).$DISCA $HAL $WMTGot 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 Snack's Daily. It is Tuesday, October 20th. Nick, we got a 3x differential between Vermont and California right now. He way over in California, Jack's got a winner-as-coming situation. It came. It's already here.

It's truly Robert Frost, emphasis on Frost in Vermont right now. Jack's literally wearing the wolf that like John Snow wore. I haven't worn a shirt in three days. Nick's wearing a low-density Everlane Light Tea. Managed to survive, so it's the best one. at over here at Snacks Daily. Jack, what's our first story over there? Walmart is transforming a thousand of its superstores into life-size Walmart apps. So Walmart doesn't want you using its app. It wants you to physically experience that thing. For our second story, surgeries on tiny pets

are expensive because they require tiny little surgical instruments. We need to send away for those. We noticed, though, that popular insta account, the dodo, is pivoting to pet insurance. For our third and final story, shares of the oil legend Halliburton have officially fallen 50% this year. That's because Halliburns selling oil shovels to a black gold, gold rush that no one's rushing into anymore. But Snackers, before we hit those three stories, happy T-boy Tuesday. It's officially two weeks from Election Day. Jack, that came out of nowhere after, you know, a casual 218 month-long campaign. Yeah, no big deal. Nick just dropped off his ballot at a San Francisco blue USPS mailbox. Jack, first time I vote out here, California now lets you track these ballots farm-to-table style. You see him go from

the soil all the way to the tree to like back into the mailbox. Well, I think the algorithm was invented in California, so it makes sense. In the meantime, in a broadband area far, far away, Jack is planning on voting in the great state of Vermont. I got my ballot early, but I'm going to actually drop it off on election day because the town's population is 528. I think there will be no lines there. Jack, under 1,000, I think you have to use carrier pigeon to submit your ballot. They'd ask me to have a witness sign, but there are no witnesses. You have to yell from a really tall mound to find one. As we said, It's two weeks before the election, but the biggest thing isn't just to vote. No.

And exercise your democratic rights. No, a big thing Jack and I are fans of is multiplier effects and multiplying the impact of your vote. Here's the deal. Over the next two weeks, try to get two of your buddies or family members to vote. Because just because they've registered doesn't mean they're going to follow through and end up voting themselves two weeks from today. They may need a healthy dose of peer pressure. You might need to give the little bit of a nudge. If you're curious how Nick and I are planning to vote, we shared more on our. 2020 voting plans through our personal social media accounts.

That's right. You can check it out at T-Boy Jack and then also at Nick of New York. We thought our Instagram and Twitter accounts were the right place for that. In the meantime, the election day, it's usually one day. This year, it's the next two weeks. Happy election two weeks. Multiply your vote. 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. The snacks about the hair ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views. of robberhood family. It's all

informational just so you know. We're not recommending any securities. Nope. 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, Walmart is going through its biggest store redesign ever. They're bringing their app to life. To life. As a store. Snackers coming to a thousand. in Walmart locations near you. By the end of this year, something kind of big. Stores that look exactly like the app. This is actually already going down. They're already

doing this to some stores. So when you walk into the Walmarts, though, it still feels like your usual warehousey Walmart with Walter at the front. The change is all in the navigation. Think GPS. Think Apple Maps. Jack and I thought this was fascinating. The first big change that's going to come to these stores, these Walmart stores, is copying airports. Airports are the best, most efficient way to navigate big groups of people from gate to gate fast jack nothing moves slower than a fanny pack but these airports can move them along so walmart's bringing in these big digital screens you know the departures the arrivals you show up everyone's looking up at it LaGuardia 442, LaGuardia 548, LaGuardia 647, which LaGuardia am I on? I know it's New York, but is it LGA, JFK, or EWR? Does it matter? Can you round up in this situation?

Walmart's bringing those into Walmarts, but it's not Denver to Miami. No. It's the deli section to the sports apparel section. It's going to use the same kind of fonts. It's going to have the same kind of clarity, and they're not stopping there. They're even bringing in like internationally recognized symbols. Like, you know, from the airport. Like the exit is like, you know, the humanoid figure walking through a door.

It's an awkward one. It always makes me a little stressed. In the meantime, Walmart's come up with like the universal sign for patio garden. And the universal sign for deli, which is of course a cold cut sandwich. Huge missed opportunity here, by the way, Jack. You know what I'm thinking? Deviled eggs. How come the rolling sidewalk hasn't become a thing inside Walmart? The lazification of America. Change number two. Yes. Coming to the Walmart superstores, they're making the app a map experience, which seamlessly displays to you the aisles that are standing before you. I mean, I don't want to go too backwards here, but you could put the ads on the moving sidewalk.

Snackers, you open up this new and improved Walmart app at the Walmart store, and first you're going to see arts and crafts. That is over there. You're going to see the hardware section in the app. That is behind you. And you're going to see the baking section over there. It's over in the corner by the deli. I don't know why they didn't just call it a bakery. The departments displayed in the app correspond with the departments in the store before you.

Jack and I jumped in snack style, and that's exactly what we saw all 24 departments in the store. are the same as what you're seeing in the app. The goal here is to empower the shopper to never have to ask a Walmart worker again. Excuse me, sir, can I trouble you to help me find the peanut butter? You're not going to do that because everything the Walmart worker knows,

you already know too, because of the app in your hand. You search for the skippies in the app. It tells you to turn left when you make the entrance. You are now a super shopper with the Walmart app. Now Snackers, Jack and I are looking at this and we're like, you know what, of course they want you to download the app.

Of course they want the seamless experience from the app, but the real story here is our takeaway. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over Walmart? The biggest debate in retail? The Brows. Walmart hates the Brows. They're killing the Brows. They want you in and out of their store as soon as possible.

Maybe you want the pillowcase. They want you to purchase it in three minutes, just like Delta wants you off the plane in three minutes. In fact, Walmart doesn't want you stopping in the middle of Isle 3 to test a product out at all. No, no, no. Jack and I noticed as part of this redesign, They're creating these designated quote-unquote beacons where you can try things out out of the way of the aisle so you don't get in anyone else's way.

Walmart is betting that efficiency will bring in more profits for them. But funny thing Jack and I have noticed before, Target is betting on the exact opposite when it comes to browsing. Target thinks it's all about the browse. They think browsing leads to discovery, fun and spontaneous buys. Target wants you walking by on your way to the deli, but then you're like, wait a second, Jack, these Javayanas are going to look great on your feet. Wait, are those Reese's peanut butter cups? I need those. Slows you down but makes life more fun.

That's why in 2017, Target invested $7 billion to redesign their stores designed for moments of serendipity. And as Fast Company pointed out, the result, foot traffic at those targets hit their highest number in decades thanks to browsing. Walmart hates the brows. Target loves the brows. I love the Drake. For our second story, Halliburton is selling shovels to the oil gold rush. Problem is, nobody's going on that black gold gold rush anymore. No, no, no, not.

Which means Jack and I have got to get in the old time machine and get back to the year 2000. Y2K, sigh relief, not a thing. Dick Cheney is the chairman of the board and the CEO of Halliburton. But at that moment, he then resigns to become the vice president of the United States. Fast forward a few years.

It's February of the year 2003. The United States is preparing to invade Iraq. On the business side of that invasion, the Bush administration grants Halliburton a huge contract to deal with oil wells in Iraq after the invasion. This is when everyone was talking about Halliburton, because there was a big controversy with those contracts granted by the Bush administration. Because those contracts are the kind of thing you'd expect to be like competitive bids.

A lot of people would have the opportunity to try to get, but wasn't the case for Halliburton. You'd expect the Bush administration to be like, hey, I got to like take care of these 500 oil wells in Iraq. Yeah. Who's offering it for the lowest price and the best quality? Honestly, you picture them going to like Sotheby's on this thing. They didn't, though. They just gave it to Halliburton and people wondered if it was because of Dick Chained. But in that last nearly 20 years, Halliburton's kind of stayed out of the mainstream

spotlight unless you happen to be in the oil and gas industry. Let's talk to you because of that about Halliburton. Like most of the oil and gas industry, Halliburton's based in Houston, Texas. Yeah, and also like most of the oil and gas industry, it follows the price of oil religiously. That's why the stock of Halliburton peaked in the year 2014 when the price of a barrel of oil was $115. But today, the price of crude oil is down to $40 a barrel. That's like a quarter of a barrel of milk, by the way. You're telling me a barrel of milk is different than a barrel of crude oil? I did some aggressive back of the envelope math that we're probably going to have to issue a correction on tomorrow.

But Snackers, because of that 50% plus drop in the price of oil, Halliburton's stock is now down 85. percent from that high in 2014. So Jack and I are checking out Halliburton, but we realized that yesterday was a particularly important moment to cover the company because they just updated us on the last three months. In the third quarter, revenue at Halliburton was down 47 percent compared to the same quarter last year. That led to a loss of $19 million, which was better than like the absurdly low expectations. So the stock rose a tad from the basement to still in the basement. And the stock has now officially lost half of its value in the last 10 months. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Halliburton? What happens to the shovel sellers when the gold rush ends? Yeah, and Jack,

who watches the watchman? These are the tough questions these days. When there's a gold rush snackers, some companies dig for gold. Other companies try to make money by just selling those gold digger shovels. If you want to see where a company lands on that spectrum, just check out there About Us page. For example, Halliburton's begins with this. We help customers. customers maximize value. Jack, translation. They're not digging for gold. No, they're selling shovels. Now, what happens, though, when the gold rush ends and like, there's no more gold? Well, the shovel sellers, they either pivot or they die. Yeah, in Halberton's case, their services are ideal for oil companies. They're helping, you know, locate where the oil is under the earth. They're going to

consult like ExxonMobil on how to drill through the earth most efficiently to get to the ocean of oil that lives beneath. Jack, what if you're trying to get the oil from the Gulf of Mexico to the mainland without spilling? Who are you going to call? Alliburton, that's who you're going to call. Now, Halliburne has sold a lot of theoretical shovels over the years to oil companies, but that oil rush is, it's kind of over right now. Natural gas is what's in in the energy industry, not oil. It's what all the cool kids are talking about.

So Halliburton's trying to pivot to the fracking industry instead. If it fails to pivot, Halliburton could run out of gas. For our third and final story, this one's wild. The Dodo is a virtuoso of monetizing animal videos online. They just went full corporate, though, adding a pet insurance business. So Jack and I are going to borrow some tools from our fifth grade English teachers here to show and not tell what kind of content the dodo post to Instagram and YouTube. Here's the video. Dog copies every single yoga pose his dad does. Or Jack, have you seen this video?

Cat is very involved in his mom's daily routine. Dog becomes obsessed with newborn baby donkey. It's charming because it's true. Now, Snaggers, these are actual Dodo videos, but unsurprisingly, they have millions of views because content is king? These videos are gold, and you'd have to be a monster not to watch them. That's why the Dodo has 100 million followers on social media and online. But the Dodo is not UNICEF, and they happen to be owned by a media company called Group 9, which is partially owned by a company called Discovery Inc. Jack and I noticed.

Discovery Inc. is a massive media company behind Shark Week, the deadliest catch. and it has a publicly traded stock for the past 15 years. But from Dodo to the Discovery Channel, every online content created, doesn't matter who you are, has dreaded this one monetization question. How do you turn your online audience into cash money for yourself?

So when it comes to the Dodo, they've actually already done the easy part here. They've done the easy monetization. They collect a portion of YouTube ad revenues and they're selling merchandise. This is like your standard media stuff. This is the like sit, stay good boy of the media industry world.

The Dodo has also gotten creative, though. The Dodo has a Netflix and Quibi show. It also has a children's book, and then, because it's 2020, it has a podcast. Did we mention it also has a sponsored Airbnb experiences collection called Destination Animals? So you could go to Puerto Rico or you could go to Puerto Rico and play chess against an iguana. That's what we're expecting this Airbnb deal is. In the meantime, though, Jack and I noticed a fascinating pivot going on over at the Dodo. They just unveiled their big news.

future profit puppy, pet insurance. That's right, the Dodo, a media company, has partnered with Pet Plan and an unremarkable pet insurance company that's owned by the German company Allions. Yeah, Pet Plan, it's so unremarkable, they're renaming themselves to The Fetch. That's right, Gratchen, Fetch is coming full circle here. Fetch is giving up some ownership of themselves to the dodo, but in exchange they're getting something very good. And this is the most important part. The Fetch is going to be getting free advertising on the Dodo's viral content channels across the board. Cat is very involved in his mom's daily routine. And mom should be just as involved in cat's health care decisions, meet fetch, pet insurance for your cat. That's right. The company

formerly known as PEPP plant already has 250,000 insured pet members today. But now they'll be chasing Dodo's 100 million American audience members who have dogs. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at the media situation, the Dodo? Ads aren't enough for media companies to survive. No, Snackers, there was a day back when newspapers and magazines they made most of their money from ads. But those ad revenues have been eaten away by Google and Facebook. And so some media companies have pivoted themselves and started charging for subscriptions. The Dodo, though, is leveraging its animal-loving audience to sell pet insurance. Not through ads, though, but through the wildest change we've seen through partial ownership of a pet insurance company.

The Dodo is apparently a creature that natural selection chose to survive the adpocalypse. It's a Galapagos Dodo. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? Walmart wants each in-store shopper to shop with its app. The app isn't just an app, it's a physical experience to kill the brows. For our second story, Halliburton was booming when its oil drilling clients were chasing oil. Now the oil rushes over, it needs to pivot to natural gas, can't sell shovels to the old stuff. For our third and final story, the dodo is taking part ownership of a pet insurance company called The Fetch to monetize its audience.

because the Dodo is extinct in real life. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one tweeted in by Lindsay Argenti, and you can tweet us your snack facts, by the way, at Robin Hood Snacks. We want to see them. When it rains, it pours. A legendary phrase came from the 1800s. When something bad happens,

a lot more bad stuff tends to happen. Is it only bad stuff? I feel like when it rains, it pours, can be for good things, too. I feel like the inverse is when it's sunny. It's really sunny. Turns out, though, that expression was taken by the Morton Salt Company,

who has the logo of a girl with an umbrella on every one of those little containers. Yeah, at the last turn of the century, they added a little, you know, magnesium carbonate to their salt so that it wouldn't clump up when you would pour it if it was humid out. That's why they adopted the genius slogan, when it rains, it pours in 1914.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Morton Salt? Salt is the only rock that we humans eat. Yeah? And it's apparently also the only rock that dissolves in water. Think about it. if you're eating any other rocks, you should definitely consult a physician. Snackers, a quick correction from a pod last week about Fubo TV, the little streaming video engine

that could. Yeah, Fubo TV is cable TV, but cheaper and online, and it just IPOed. We misstated their market gap. The total value of all the stock out there. Turns out they're actually worth $1.3 billion, not the $700 million we misspoke last week. You know, when it rains, it pours. But Snackers, in the meantime, we hope you forgive us and share your with everyone out there. HY HY-YS-D is all you got to tell your buddies who haven't snack yet. Have you had your snacks daily?

We'll see you tomorrow. If you know, you know. And before we leave you, huge congrats to snacker Alejandro Alanis who proposed to his girlfriend at the highest point in North Dakota. And heart-echn gluch to Delany and Scotty, who just had their first baby in Geese,

Germany. And congrats to Molly, who just landed the job of McKinsey in Prague. And happy second anniversary to Megan and Robbie Blevins in Atlantic Beach, And happy anniversary to Grant and Mandy Maureen in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Happy 7th anniversary to Peter and Monica in Brooklyn, New York. And happy birthday to Bruce Lim over in Atlanta.

And to Omar Perez on Long Beach, California. And to Alex Reed's a little further down the beach in Redondo Beach, California. And to Josiah and Gabriel Dunlap, happy birthdays in Panama City Beach, Florida. This is Jack. I own stock of Fubo TV, Nick on stock of 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.