The Best One Yet - 🍪 “Someone stole the recipe” — Uber’s shortage. Honest’s stock birth. Moderna’s recipe.

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

If you thought your 1st Uber ride in a year felt more expensive… it was (Uber’s $20B in quarterly bookings were its best ever). Honest Co jumped 44% on its IPO, but influencers have become its greatest strength... and its greatest threat. And Moderna was told it may have to make an unprecedented move: Share its vaccine recipe with other chefs.$HNST $UBER $MRNAGot 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 Friday, the real Friday. May 7th, Jack. Stocks just hit a record high in honor of moms everywhere. Snackers, pause this pod. Call your mother.

She gave you life. Do this right now. You should do this. Appreciation for gestation. Celebrate the wins, Jack. This also happens to be like our best Snacks Daily yet. For our first store, Uber just had its best quarter of bookings ever, but the stock still fell because of a driver problem. If your first Uber ride in a year felt more expensive, it's going to be.

Because it was more expensive. That was a thing. For a second story, diaper legend, honest company jumped 44% on their IPO. Oh, it's greatest strength. Jessica Alba. Is its greatest risk. Jessica Alba. Third and final story, Jack.

Mederana's vaccine patent is the life source for their profit. It's modernas one and only. It's modern as everything. And President Joe Biden might unpatent Madonna's patented vaccine recipe. But Snackers, before we hit that wonderful mix of stories before. For the weekend, Jack, this feels like a good one to go into the weekend with. There's a logistics business that moms and dads are most proud of above all. That nationwide coast-to-coast logistics business?

Yes. The Girl Scouts of America. Specifically, Jack and I jumped in snack style for the Girl Scout cookie conglomerate. They don't have an S-1. No. But it would show 800 million in annual sales of cookies. Girl Scout cookies. Basically a unicorn is what we're trying to say.

They don't have an S-1. They also don't tell us their valuation. but we're going to use a food and beverage value to sales multiple of 4x. Well, not the old MBA books here. That multiple would give the Girl Scout cookies a valuation of $3.2 billion. Ipso facto Girl Scout cookies is worth a quarter of a lift. Oh, Snackers, you're not satisfied of those numbers. You want a confectionary industry comparable comps to figure out the valuation?

According to our buddies at Vox, Girl Scout Cookies sells more cookies than Oreos Ducks. Oh, you're not an Orioles person? Well, Girl Scout sells more cookies. than Chips Ahoy and Milano's combined. Now, the marketing strategy is a sales force of girls that Mark Beniof would sell a tower for. One million scouts hit the streets day and day out every spring. They're working. And they're not looking at the click-through rate.

They're looking at the number of doors knocked on today. That's the key KPI. Jack, I'm checking out the KPI here. The average scout is selling $800 of calories. Curious if they have pricing power? Well, they did jack up prices of cookies by 30% in 2017. And customers bought more of the cookies. Is there innovative juice in Girl Scout of America?

Jack, I'm so glad you ask. Well, notice that they're testing delivery via drone of Girl Scout cookies this year in Virginia. The thin mint monopoly. The tag-along term holds snackers. Let's hit our three-starred. Three Samoa's. You're tuned in the snacks daily. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way.

It snacks about to hear rain food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the rob of her 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, Uber's gross bookings just hit, get this, get this. Their highest point ever. There was some good and some bad in this stock report.

But the stock fell 9% because of missed expectations. I mean, Jack, we're going to have to jump. like right here to the headline comeback hero number that the people are talking about. Uber's total bookings hit a record $20 billion last quarter. Snaggers, pull out the whiteboard. We got to add up the food delivery orders, you add up the ride hails, walk away with $20 billion worth of tacos and trips. And that's a record despite the pandemic.

Now, on the revenue side, it's a little more complicated. Rides fell by 65% compared to a year ago. But Eats, Jack, can you tell us how Uber's eats food delivery business did? More than tripled, aka 2,000. 130% growth. Jack, I don't say this often, but I'm going to have to say, shut up. Not even fair. Snackers, Uber eats, their food delivery business, like the side hustle of Uber a few years ago is now 60% of Uber's revenues. That's right. That means there's two pad ties for every one Patrick Thompson waiting for you on the corner. So we're just going to put this out there. Please, people, stop calling rides Uber's core business. Don't do it.

It's been number two for four straight quarters behind eats. It has. But Snackers, we should talk about this. may have just taken your first Uber ride in a year. Did you, Nick? I have. Was it more expensive than you expected? Not a little bit more expensive. You're like 28 bucks. This used to be like 22.

Just trying to go to brunch. I got to walk everywhere. Well, we learned from Lyft Snackers two days ago that nearly one million riders took a lift ride in the first quarter compared to the year before. Now, as riders are coming back to Lyft, the funny thing we're noticing here is that drivers are not. You're getting an imbalance. There's more riders coming on to Lyft than there are. drivers coming on to Lyft. Now, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and what happens to Lyft happens

to Uber. True. So the result of having more riders than drivers right now is like slow motion surge pricing. Jack, I love the way you just put that. Thank you. And that means Nick had to pay Polly more for riding his Prius. Yeah. Who's favorite brunch spot than the year before. Because Uber wanted to get Polly back in that Prius. So Jack, what is the takeaway for our buddies over at Uber? Platforms are like cradles that require constant attention and rocking and a baby model. The takeaway hits close to home, baby. Now, last quarter, Snackers, Uber, they didn't focus on the rider side of their platform. Instead, they focused on the driver's side of their platform.

CEO, Dara Costa Shahi yesterday. We're going to put up our capital at Uber to bring more drivers onto our platform. So ultimately, to make riders happy, Uber's got to make the drivers happy first. And that's why they recently announced a one-time $250 million driver stimulus to tempt drivers back to the Uber wheel. Okay. So we're adding all this up. Not only did Uber just increase fares on us. Which is good for drivers.

But it also interestingly cut the percentage that it takes out of those fares. Basically what they call the take rate. Cutting the take rate is also good for drivers. And Jack and I jumped in Snacks style, we noticed that Uber's take rate decreased from 22.7% to 21.5% so that drivers could keep more money. Drivers get to keep 79% of your Uber fare instead of just 77% last year. Platforms, they require constant attention to both sides. So Uber's cradling the driver's side right now. For our second story, the honest company, its stock surged on its IPO this week.

But honest company's greatest asset is also its greatest risk. It is. Now, I feel like Jack, can we sum up honest company here? It's like Goop and Target had a lavender-scented, unprofitable baby. You don't have to sum it up for me. I have a castle of honest baby wipes. Jack's running a wet wipes fulfillment center outside the podstrue. Yes. And I can tell you, it's a direct-to-consumer, no harmful ingredients,

consumer package goods company. I like what you did there because there were a lot of acronyms we could have used, but you didn't use them. I spelled them all out. The stock, those snack is, the stock for Honest, it jumped 44% on its first day of trading, did it a little bit yesterday, but still a big IPO pop. And Honest is worth $2 billion based on today's $20 share stock price. Now, we did cover when they dropped their IPO paperwork a month ago on April 19th. And here was our highlight. That honest company has a anchor product, diapers. They called it their strategic business acquisition tool. And the highlight here was something called a diaper cake, which is a $99 stack of diapers that every baby shower should have. It's shaped in the shape of a wedding cake. It's like three

layers. It's a great gift. Life regret, I didn't send you one of these. Now, 50% of first time customers are drawn in by diapers. Now, that's key. That's half their customers. But then 90% of those first time diaper buyers end up tossing in detergent and lotion and shampoo on their second order. Much like a baby, you start with a diaper and then you move on and need a lot more things. Diapers are an anchor product. Now, an honest IPO earlier this week, we noticed that all the attention was really going to Jess Galba, the founder. She was here, she was there, she was everywhere.

She was a New York Times best selling author. You know her from The Fantastic Four. She was also in some Alex Mac and she's got some corporate titles. Well, she's the founder, the chief creative officer, and the chief creative officer and the chair of the board of directors of the honest company. And she's a great mom and entrepreneur and has a whopping 39 million followers across all her social media. And that is how honest company has achieved 25% unaided brand awareness right now in America. Snackers, let that wild stat sink in because it means when a whole bunch of random Americans were surveyed, a quarter of them knew about the honest company

brand. That's very impressive. And page 27 of this company's IPO paperwork, it says that the success of our brand depends on ongoing affiliation with Jessica. Okay, depend is like a really strong word. So Jack and I got curious, jumped in snack style, and we kept on reading. This includes a likeness agreement. Yes, it does. In other words, honest's right to use Jessica's name and face in their marketing. But there's a pretty big problem here because then we also notice that Ms. Jessica Alba can terminate this likeness agreement at any time. She can leave honest at any time. And what happens if she goes rogue? Oh my God. Jessica Alba going rogue. This is like something out of Fantastic Four. Let's say she starts pushing a movement that babies shouldn't be wearing diapers

at all. Basically, the hashtag free the fanny movement. Well, honest brand also depends on a positive image and positive public popularity of Jessica Alba. Again, Snackers, these are honest company's words that they are completely dependent on Jessica Alba in every way. If Jessica Alba hashtag free the fanny, that could sink the stop. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at the honest company? Influencer marketing has become the great asset and their greatest risk. Oh, we jumped in further snacks out to this IPO paperwork. They mentioned the word influencer a whopping 18 times because he got every single day thousands of influencers hawk an honest diapers. And that is really important for honest because

55% of honest company sales happen online. And you're not discovering honest diapers in aisle 7. You're discovering them on the seventh post in your instafeat. So honest needs social media influencers, but they can't control the content of influencers. They literally list that as a risk because influencers, they can say whatever they want. Julie can tell her 50,000 followers that Moisturizing Cream makes your baby smarter. Yeah. And Honest could get sued for that misleading post that they're branded all over. Because we should clarify, Moistrarizer probably is not going to make you smarter. Honest depends on one huge influencer, Jessica Alba and an army of smaller influencers. But it also could be crushed

by its one huge influencer and its army of smaller influencers. For our third and final story to send you into the weekend, Madeira. They just dropped earnings. But the bigger story was they may lose their patents. Yeah. We're going to tell you how Wall Street is handling the potential end of COVID vaccine profits. All right. For this one, we're going to sprinkle a little context here. Johnson Johnson, making a solid $0 of profit on every vaccine. Pfizer's making 20 cents a profit for every dollar of vaccine sales. Right. We spoke by that earlier this week. They're doing the first and fancy strategy. That's worked out well. We just learned yesterday that Moderna is making 71 cents of profit.

for every dollar of vaccine sales. That's inappropriate. No one should be making that kind of profit on anything. When there's a pandemic and you have the cure, you shouldn't be making that much profit. I mean, is this like a software company? Did Mark Andreessen do something with these guys? What's going on here?

Naturally, Moderna and Pfizer stocks are at record high levels right now. Yeah, they are. Largely because of vaccine sales. Which is when this, like, out of nowhere thing dropped yesterday from President Biden in the Oval Office. He supports a temporary waiver of patent protections for the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson and vaccines. It hit Moderna hard because that would mean having to reveal its secret vaccine recipes

for the whole world to see. And let any pharmaceutical factory use that recipe to make vaccines themselves with no fear of getting sued for violating a patent. Anyone with an Italian grandmother knows that when you ask for the eggplant parm recipe, you're only going to get three out of the four ingredients that are actually in that recipe. She never tells you the whole thing. You get the whole thing. Yeah. If this plan goes through. And the goal is to let developing nations brew up their own vaccines in their own kitchens. They're getting all of grandma's eggplant, palm recipe. Now, this actually isn't Joe Biden's decision to make. It's the World Trade Organization's decision. But what we're thinking is that with Biden's blessing, it means it's more

likely to actually happen. Now, a waiver of a patent as valuable as a COVID vaccine patent, this is unprecedented. So unprecedented, this would mean a huge break in the promise of capitalism kind of unprecedented. The promise of capitalism, if you invent something awesome and you get that thing patented. It is your thing to make money on and only yours. Coca-Cola, run with it. Copycat protection is a huge reason why companies invest years and billions of dollars into research and development, especially in pharmaceuticals. Patent protection is the ultimate competitive advantage. You're the only one. You get your own little monopoly for a while. It's fun. I mean, they can't do what you get to do. And now the vaccine companies are worried that their profit puppy

recipe that they work so hard for will get mass copy and pasted in factories across the world. Now, Moderna actually says it's okay because way more orders for the vaccine have come in than they can even supply. Investors said it's not okay. We're going to dump the stock 16% because every neighborhood could start brewing up their own vaccine. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over Moderna and all of capitalism? When the government's involved, profits may not be. Snackers, the pharmaceutical industry and investors of vaccine companies, they were pretty dismayed when they heard this the other day. If the government breaks their promise this time with this patent, then the next pandemic,

pandemic, pharmaceutical companies will be less motivated to save the day. But here's the thing. There's like a funky wrinkle here. The U.S. government technically invested nearly $6 billion in grants to develop the COVID vaccine in the first place that those recipes are based on. And they invested another $6 billion in pre-orders for the vaccine before they were even approved to guarantee sales for those pharmaceutical companies working on them. Now, a little adjusted asteris here. Pfizer, we should say, did develop its vaccine on its own, did not get government support. Not the case with. Moderna. Proponents of this patent waiver that Joe Biden now supports, they say the vaccines are a product of

taxpayer investment. When the government's involved, profits may not be. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us before the weekend? People are hailing Uber more than ever despite the pandemic. Uber, it's coddling the drivers right now because he got to coddle a platform. For a second story, honest company had a great IPO. Yeah, did. Jessica Alba, biggest strength, biggest risk. But Dernas vaccine is ludicrously profitable. Obsert. That could change if its recipe gets open source to the whole world. By the way, Jack, the missing ingredient for my grandmother. What is it?

Put the parmesan in the sauce that she was making. She made her own sauce. She never told us that. And no breading. Just egg on the eggplant. Just egg on the egg. That sounds delicious. Now, time for our snack fact of the day.

This one's sent in by David Crogey over in lovely Des Moines, Iowa. Outside of Louisville, Kentucky on I-265. Great Highway. The highway signs use the metric system. Weird. The exit is in a quarter mile away. it's actually 0.4 kilometers away. Well, the reason is because in the 70s, there was a big push in the U.S.

to switch to the metric system. And apparently Kentucky's governor got like so excited about this. He put together a task force and they changed some of the signs. Now, in fairness, the metric system, way more sense than whatever system we're using. 32 degrees freezing, 260 degrees boiling. Yeah, those are pretty random numbers. We'll take the latter. Snackers, you look fantastic this week.

Jack, week three with the baby. Actually, Mother's Day, Is Wilder's one-month birthday? Wild. Works on so many levels. Snackers, when you see other humans this week and ask, I'm H-Y-H-Y-Y-S-D. Have you had your snacks, deal? That's how we grow.

If you know, you know. And before we go, happy birthday to Brooklyn Brink. The Boston Birthday Girl and Unicorn Investor is currently on Nantucketucket. Fantastic. Yes. A lot of rainboards, a lot of unicorns. Congrats to Lorne Yin, who ran 11 marathons and 11 months based in San Francisco. And running with the 11 theme, Ben Street, 11-year anniversary of the kidney transplant.

Congratulations, Ben. And happy birthday to Avi Shah and happy wedding anniversary over in Anaheim Hills. And Yucco, happy birthday, Oklahoma City. And Jason Persinger, happy birthday in Charlotte, North Carolina. And to Caitlin Coombe down in Los Angeles. And Vincent in New York City. And Eric Rockleson down in Syracuse. And Grant Cohn in Tempe, Arizona.

And happy birthday down the street in San Francisco. Happy four-year adoptiversary, aka guy. Gotcha day to Leo the dog in Dubai. And Elliot's got the new job over a TikTok in Los Angeles. Not too shabby, Elliot, hit us up. Luis and Christina Fawn, congrats on the baby girl in San Juan, Puerto Rico. And congrats to Tamara and John for getting married in Maryland. And Jason and Jake both graduating both from grad school in Malika Hill, New Jersey.

Happy first Mother's Day to Wilder's mom, my wife, Alexander. Alex, you're glowing. Celebrate the win. 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. Thank you.