The Best One Yet - 🎮 “Ready Gamer One” — GameStop’s earnings. GoPuff’s $9B bodega. Hipster antitrust.

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

For the 1st time since January’s GameStop stock pop, we actually got GameStop’s earnings report. GoPuff hits a $9B valuation for bringing the bodega to you. And Lina Kahn is bringing the “hipster antitrust movement” to the 4 tech companies you use most.$GME $AMZN $GOOG $AAPL $DASHGot 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 Wednesday, March 24th. To all our snackers from coast to coast. From New York to California. From VT to UT. And all the crypto bros who moved to Miami for one year exclusively for tax purposes. Today's pod is the best one yet. TVY. Jack, first story. What do we got over here? In January, we had Game Stock Stop Pop. Yesterday we had GameStop's earnings. It's like looking in the mirror the morning after. For our second story, Go Puff. Just hit a $9 billion valuation for bringing the bodega. to you. Jack, they solved the age-old challenge. Last Mile Slim Jim. For our third and final story, in the 1900 railroads got broken up. Old school. In the 19 teens, it was oil. Aggressive. In the 1980s, telecom. Snackers, welcome to the era of hipster antitrust. Not a coffee. No, it's a movement. With the 32-year-old leader who doesn't like Amazon. But Snackers, before we hit those three fantastic stories, we just discovered the best resume verb. Jack, it's not accomplice. Jack, it's not accompli. It's not lead. It's not built.

It's not launched. It's none of those. It's actually sat down. As in, sat down with Oprah for an interview. Fresh off the big chat with Oprah on CBS. Prince Harry is taking his talents to Silicon Valley. Yeah, get this. New Resume Bull, he's going to be the chief impact officer in a startup called Better Up.

That's a startup focused on mental health and employee coaching. And we applaud the Duke of Edinburgh's move. We also respect the mental health focus he's had for like a bunch of years now. Yeah. By the way, Chief Impact Officer, I guess they're continuing the tradition of making up new titles for royalty. They are. And by the way, the Prince, he's going to have to make a few changes. We have some ideas for you. Yeah. Highland Hunting Jacket, that's out. Patagonia half zip, that's in. Prince, wellies are out. All birds, those are in. That's what you do. Oh, yeah, you're going to want to leave your sword and crown by the robot parista.

Harry, no more poach salmon lunches with a side bowl of hollandaise sauce. Instead, just lecture everybody around you about intermittent fasting routine. But remember, Harry, we know you're listening. Send us a snack fact, by the way. Every tech company is actually a flat organization. Except, of course, for the Royal C-Suite and his loyal subjects. His Majesty, the VP of Sussex and Silicon, let's hit our three stories. You're tuned in the snacks daily. Snacks about the hair ain't food is air candy. They don't reflect the views of the robberhood family.

It's all informational just so. We're not recommending any securities. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security. For our first Digestable Business news for you Robberhood Financial

LLC Member Fenra Slash SIPC For our first story Here we go GameStop Just had its moment Of truth

It's the first earnings report For GameStop Since January's GameStop Stock pop Well said If you can say it Three times fast

Send us the video I mean we'd love to see the video I thought you did great though That's the first time I've said it One time fast And you did it live on air

I thought that was fantastic Now Snackers GameStop is the video game retailer that got the Paris Hilton treatment. GameStop, it is famous for being famous. That's what they're doing. It's the blockbuster of video games that some investors think is the Netflix of video games. Real Housewives of GameStop. Now, ironic because Jack, GameStop's getting a Netflix show about the situation that happened in January. Now, back in January, the stock surged 10 times higher out of nowhere. And then it lost half of its value since then. So there's been some change.

But we just got the first earnings since the GameStop stock pop. Oh, yeah, Snackers, you know what we did. Jack and I jumped in Snack style, got to see everything that happened with GameStop from November to January. All right. So last quarter, comparable sales at stores that were open were up 7% and online sales jumped to 175% from the year before. Jack, seems nice. You want more? Profits hit 81 million last quarter, which is also up from last year. Jack seems very nice. Unfortunately, most of that profit tax benefits.

including from the CARES Act, which was the first COVID relief bill Congress passed one year ago. All right, so Jack, we're talking $70 million in tax benefits. Think of this is like a corporate tax refund that comes out helping their profits. And they made $81 million in profit last year. Without the $70 million tax benefit, profits would have fallen compared to the year before. Okay, so it feels like we should also sprinkle on a little bit more context on top of these sales. Most of the sales growth from last quarter actually came. from sales of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

We're talking to the left and right biceps of gaming consoles over here. Both are new gaming consoles and had a rush of holiday buyers that probably won't continue as much in the future. Unfortunately, both those gaming consoles are less profitable than games for GameStop. And that's why the stock fell by 7% yesterday before the report and 12% more after the report dropped. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at GameStop who popped and then dropped? That was GameStop's numbers, but what about the GameStop story we've heard so much about?

Snackers, some investors in GameStop believe in their turnaround strategy, which Jack and I like to call the People and Places turnaround strategy. Let's start with the people. Chewy's co-founder is now on the board of GameStop, and they have a brand new CEO, a chief operating officer, who's from Amazon and Google, which also sounds very e-commercey. Jack, thank you for introducing us to the people. Can you take us and tell us about the places? To be more like an online retailer, you need to shut down some of those like 5,000 stores they have.

Just a few. And last year, they closed 700 of the worst performing ones. Okay, so that people in places turnaround strategy. That story got like some support in this earnings report that we were just talking about. But other GameStop investors don't care about people in places. No, they don't. They bought in January because they believe in camaraderie. Yes.

Virality. True. And beaten the heck out of the head funds. Well, this November to January earnings report, it has nothing. to do with any of that. To recap, for some, the GameStop story was supported by this earnings report. But for others, these earnings had nothing to do with their GameStop story. For our second story, GoPuff, just raised $1.2 billion to hit a $9 billion valuation, Jack. We think they should call themselves Bodega Plus.

Founded in Philadelphia, 2013, on the charming Drexel campus of West Philadelphia, Jack. Yeah, a lot better story than a Harvard dorm room. Glad to hear Drexel. Those engineers, they get hungry because the core business for this company, 30-minute, convenience store delivery for the average user who's in their 30s. They started by serving the dorm diet. Love it. It actually started with on-demand hookah.

And then they expanded to snacks, alcohol, and cleaning supplies. It's not quite a pyramid. I guess that's more of like a trapezoid jack. But then they matured. If you look at the website of GoPuff Now, you'll immediately see Vermonto and Ben & Jerry's. And then you're going to see an IPA, some Tylenol, and a... paper towel. Are we really going to say they matured that much, yeah? I'm 33 and I consume all of those things. So yeah. But here's the thing, Snackers. That F and GoPuff, it is a, it's a devil's tail,

technically. If you look at the logo. Yeah, look at the logo. They're still a little noddy over at GoPuff. And the name of the company literally implies smoking. Honestly, we have the perfect rebrand for you guys. Bodega Plus. GoPuff has become the around the corner store from you, but digitized. Bodega Plus. Now, you might be thinking Postmates, Amazon Prime, Instacar, Uber, they all deliver stuff on demand. What is GoPuffs differentiator? What is the difference?

The difference is that they're able to do an absurdly low delivery fee. $1.95 to deliver with 30 minutes, like, not guaranteed, but they think they'll get to you in 30 minutes. Now, we don't know they're financials. They're a private company. But we do know how they pulled off that low delivery fee, and it's because they're vertically integrated. They order Ben and Jerry's pints directly from Ben and Jerry's and then store them in one of their 250 mini-fulfillment centers.

GoPuff isn't like sending someone to dash over to Whole Foods, shop for you, and then deliver it to your home. And cutting out that middleman, Whole Foods in this case, it keeps the cost down. And maybe they're even marking up the product on that chunky monkey to take a little profit for themselves. It's a little bit more expensive. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Go-Puff? The rest of on-demand delivery is routine and habits. GoPuff wants impulse buys and surprises. Snackers, the delivery wars, they are function over fun.

That's what they are. They're fighting for your routine, your habit-focused, practical needs. Instacart wants your bi-weekly blueberry orders. Amazon wants your monthly TP refills. GoPuff says, you know what? We're just going to avoid that whole battle. We're focused on the delight of surprise and impulse delivery. We messed around on the app a little bit.

We saw their happy hour of deals. Oh, yeah. Ditch the 5 o'clock Friday Zoom meeting and order a 30, percent off martini delivered in 30 minutes. Jack, then they got the mystery boxes. We could send our buddy Timmy some rando box of Manny Petty Gear. And then if you look right now, you'll see their March Madness snack bracket. Real thing. With number one seed sprite facing off against 16 seed Doritos. Jack, I can tell you this one thing with certainty. Instacart, Amazon Postmates would never do any of this. Gold Puff isn't chasing your boring routine refills. No, they're all about the charming surprise and

spontaneous cravings. Unfortunately, GoFuff. Puff is still a sumo stock. If you want to invest, you're straight up missing out. Noddy. For our third and final story, welcome to the era of the hipster antitrust. A 32-year-old could make the big four tech companies have to split into eight. All right, that 32-year-old Jack's talking about, look it up on LinkedIn. President Biden has nominated Lena Kahn to be the commissioner of the FTC. Born in 1989. T. Swift? Yes, T-Swift. And she's a year-R junior. She would be the youngest person to lead the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission.

Okay, so Jack, let's make sure I get this right. One of two agencies that protect consumers from monopolies will be run by someone younger than us. I guess rounding up to the 90s on this? She's a beast. And Nick, we all had a dream in college to write a paper that would change the world. My favorite, Jack, you actually proofread this, I think, sophomore year. Stewie Griffin, Psych 101, a breakdown of his psychology. That paper was ahead of its time.

Yeah. I'm telling you it was ahead of it. For me, it was part of it. It was my paper advocating for football to make a playing surface that slows people down. Right. So that tackles are less forceful and fewer concussions. The sequel to that was melting the ice in hockey games to also affect concussion numbers, right? I figure it's like running on the sand.

You'll run it. Well, Lena Kahn, she whipped up a paper when she was 28 at Yale. Law School, Jack, the title. Well, it had a little more impact than our Stewie Griffin and, like, football running one. It was called Amazon's Antitrust Paradox. And it has caused a rethinking of the whole antitrust regulatory system. Now, Snackers, there are three sentences back from like a 2018 interview that Lena Con did that explain her whole philosophy and connect everything she's thinking to the products you use.

First, as consumers, as users, we love these tech companies. That's what Lena Con said. She's referring to the four big tech giants who don't jack up prices like past monopolies. They actually offer them at lower or free prices. Second sentence, Lina went on to say, but as citizens, as workers, as entrepreneurs, we recognize that their power is troubling. All right. Here's what Lena's talking about.

Amazon has driven destruction of shopping malls and Main Street. Good luck to the startups out there jumping into the e-commerce space, Jack. Finally, Lena Kahn said, we need a new framework, a new vocabulary for how to assess and address their dominance. Let that sink in. She's talking about the apps because apps are everything right now. And Facebook has four of the 10 most downloaded apps of 2020. And like the other six it doesn't have,

it's probably zucking their core products right now. If you want to be social in this world, you cannot avoid being on Facebook's products. So after all three of these quotes, roll them all up. Lena Khan has a final proposal that we would expect to see if she's FTC Commissioner. Her critics call this hipster antitrust.

Yeah, they do. We think that's kind of a badass way to describe her philosophy. I don't drink coffee, but I would prefer hipster coffee. What's the takeaway for our buddies over at hipster antitrust? The four big tech companies, they could be split into eight companies. If Lena Con becomes FTC Commissioner, she'll probably advocate to pass these hipster antitrust reforms through Congress. She may call for Apple and Amazon to be banned from competing on their own marketplaces like

they do today. That's right. The app store, the toll booth of all apps, that could be spun off away from Apple. Amazon Basics could be torn apart from Amazon. Amazon.com. Okay, so that's Apple and Amazon. Then you got Facebook and Alphabet, which could be forced to undo the acquisitions that were anti-competitive from the past. To make sure consumers have a choice, she may require that Instagram gets split off from Facebook. And then she may be on a roll there and say, you know what? We're going to split up YouTube from the rest of Google too while we're at it.

Now, Snackers, it would take years. Years. If this did happen. Decades. And it would be fought so aggressively in court by these tech companies. A lot of lawyers. And we have a hyper-partisan congress. Yeah, so there's no guarantee the laws will change. But if Khan disrupts the disruptors, we could end up with, get this, four new publicly traded companies, maybe even more. All right, we got the OGs, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google. But then you also get the new G's App Store, Amazon, Basics, Instagram, and YouTube, boom, their own publicly traded companies.

Wow. Yeah, that would be something. That would be great for this podcast. Yeah, I would. This is Nick. This is Jack. What ticker simple should we have for Instagram? Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us and say the word naughty one more,

time for everyone, please. You're going to get me banned from something. That's true. I mean, is this an explicit podcast now? GameStop's earnings show us okay numbers and progress towards their e-commerce pivot. But honestly, not that much that is anything to do with the GameStop stock pop. For our second story, GoPuff,

better known as Bodega Plus, make it happen. It is now worth $9 billion. Delivery, that's not about function. Delivery that's about fun. For our third of final story, Lena Khan was nominated to be the FTC commissioner. And if she's confirmed, her hipster antitrust could break the four big tech into the still extremely big eight.

It's all relative. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by Jordan Marcus from a lovely Oakland, California. Okay, the longest word in the English language would take you about three and a half hours to say. Yeah, we double confirmed this. It is 189,819 letters long. Its nickname is Titan. This ain't no supercadja fragilistic expial.

Notious. This is a chemical composition, which has, you know, protein-scied names. Apparently, it's the largest protein in the world. Technically, it's not in the dictionary, but it is science. Snackers, if you wrote a paper in college that's cooler than family guy and slow grass, we want to hear the title of this thing. Yeah, tweet us at Jack Kramer, at Nick of New York, at Robin and Snacks. What paper did you write in college? That was really bragworthy. H-Y-H-YS-D, if you know, you know. We'll see you tomorrow. We'll see you tomorrow. to Snacker Haley Pitchker just got her driver's license down in Florida. Happy birthday to Lily Vanderbluman in Cleveland, Ohio. Paris on the Lake. M.O. Hay-Nahan just had her birthday in Armenia. And congrats to Vicki Mallor for having a birthday six months ago. I guess we're doing half birthdays, man.

It was a little sneaky there. Miguel Uriarte. Happy birthday in Quito Ecuador. And Chloe Williams in Philadelphia. And Nick Rosano in New York City. And Jay Puentes in Atlanta. And Hillary Miller in the Woodlands, Texas. And Phil Odenkorn, Hoboken, New Jersey.

And Steph and Richie in Arkansas. Arlington, Virginia. And Dan Aguirre in Long Beach. And Devin Silber, Newport Beach. And Sandy Tran in Philadelphia. And Ramsey, Othman, in Pacific Heights, San Francisco, down the street. I'll see him. I guess I'll see him on a run to Lions Street.

Sandy Tran, did you go to the University of Michigan Public Policy School? Are we classmates? Is this awkward? No, this is fantastic. And congrats to Rebecca Reed and Simon Roccozy for having a baby girl, Elliot Reed in Chicago. And David and Elizabeth Gonzalez, happy anniversary in Miami. Congrats to Ruta Hardikar for getting her safety certification in Texas. And Daria Lang graduating down in D.C.

And Barbara Alvarez launched a cake company. Sounds like something from a fairy tale in Venezuela. Jack and I are both chocolate guys. We'll leave it at that. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon and Netflix. Nick own 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.