The Best One Yet - Tesla’s 3 big surprises, Zuck’s crypto day with Congress, and Six Flags... is actually 6 different flags

Episode Date: October 24, 2019

Tesla popped after an earnings report with 3 big surprises (including a profit). Six Flags makes almost half its money from July through September, but the stock fell 12% because of a flat summer performance. And Zuck testified to Congress about Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency plans — and he promised to get their blessing first.Learn 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 Thursday, October 24th. Nick, we have an all-star lineup of three stories. This is the best snacks daily we've ever done. What we got. First one is Six Flags. It just finished the most important earnings corner of the season, aka vacation season. We're looking at your summer roller coaster moves and how Six Flikes didn't really jive off them. Second story is Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg just hit up Capitol Hill and got hated on by politicians and talked about crypto-cru. If you put on a suit, we've got a fashion, situation here. We're also going to talk about what he did with Libra, the cryptocurrency. Third and final story, Tesla. Yes. The stock surged 18% after a wild earnings report full of positive surprises. You get a surprise and you get a surprise and you get a, it's a total Oprah situation over here. But Snackers, before we get into those stories, we want to correct a mistake Nick and I made on the pod yesterday. All right, so we mentioned casually that the Nike Swishlow, well, maybe you've seen

it. It kind of looks like a shoe. It's kind of, it's been out there a little bit. It's kind of a big deal. Yeah. So it actually wasn't created by just some random dude. That's what we said on the pod yesterday. It was created by some random dude. Not the case. And it was pointed out to us by a great snacker named Olivia Greywall. It was actually invented by Carolyn Davidson in 1971. She was a graphic design student at Portland State University. It's all about timing. It's all about place, just like your mom always tells you. Yes, who else was at Portland State University in 1971. Turns out it was Phil Knight, who has a pretty critical role in the growth of Nike. Well, he was a college runner at University of Oregon, then became an accounting professor at PSU.

ended up founding Nike, and he hired Carolyn Davidson, paid her $35 to create the Swish logo, which took her 17 hours of graphic design work to bring. Carolyn was very diligent. She was charging $2.5 an hour, 17 and a half hours. There you go. Now, Nick, you and I went to college together. 35 bucks is a lot of money in college. It does go away.

It does go away. It does go on way. So Portland's like great beer. I'm sure you get like 30 different kind of crap beverages there. But 12 years later, Nike's like, look, we got to write this wrong. 35 bucks wasn't enough. We become a pretty big deal. Carolyn, let's bring you in and let's treat you right. So Nike, probably Phil Knight himself gave her a ring encrusted with diamonds like Super Bowl championship ring style.

And then they said, you know what? You probably should deserve a little bit of equity in our company. So they gave her stock that's now worth up to like a million dollars. They didn't just give her stock. They packed a bunch of stock certificates into an envelope, slid it across the table and said, thanks for the swoosh logo. Carolyn, congrats on what you built there. Great job with the swish. Thank you, Olivia from Castro Valley, California. We spoke to the lawyers and we got to get something legal out the way. The snacks about to hear 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. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you.

Robahood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, Tesla stock just jumped over 20, percent on all you can eat buffet of surprises. The stock's gone up like two or three percent between the intro we just did in the story. I can barely stand right now. Nick and I, everybody, Nick and I are Tesla shareholders. We've said that before. It's an intense experience.

It is. My doctor. Like, it's bad for your health. Jack is one of those things on him that, like, you press in case of an emergency. The stock's up. The stock's down. It's going to go bankrupt. It's going to be the next thing.

Help. I've fallen in. I can't get up. My doctor's like, Jack, you should remove some stresses in your life. Now, here are the three huge updates that came out of Tesla. The first one is the Model Y. This is Tesla's crossover SUV. It's ahead of schedule.

It's going to be available summer 2020. And this is perfect because Americans love crossovers. You know what a crossover is. It's bigger than a sedan, but it's not quite an SUV. You can't commit to the small thing. You feel a little insecure. But you don't want to get the big one because you just can't really afford all the gas. You don't want to be labeled a gas.

So this is the first affordable-ish Tesla car in the category that Americans want the most. Right. So they've got the most. Model X, the Model Y, the Model 3, and now the Model Y. Second update. China. The Gigafactory where it's building a bunch of batteries for its cars, it's also ahead of schedule. Like this thing, January 2019, as in like 10 months ago, this thing was a desert. They actually showed a picture of the plot of land where they started building this factory.

There was nothing on it. There was nothing there. There was nothing there. Now, this thing is so clean looking, this factory, this is a wedding venue. If you right now are planning a wedding and you've got a situation, you can't pick the right date, go to Tesla and say you want to get married at one of their factories. Check out Tesla's earnings presentation. It's actually in a slide deck format. They have beautiful photographs of this new plant in China. So in 10 months, they went zero to 60 on this thing.

And it's critical because China's a pretty important market for Tesla. It's the biggest electric vehicle market in the world by far. True. And it's getting like government support to do this completely independently. Tesla didn't have to partner up with another Chinese company. Now, both of these ahead of schedule announcements, take those with a huge grain of salt, because Elon Musk, the CEO, is wildly ambitious and usually unrealistic on these devils. When it comes to like calendars, he's got a very rough relationship with them. He thinks we should like, according to his schedule, we should be past the sun and back.

Yeah, according to his schedule, we were on Mars six weeks ago, even though there were no signs that that happened. The third big positive surprise from Tesla's earnings report. This may be the biggest one. Profits. Profits happened. $143 million of profit in a single quarter. Now, Tesla hasn't had a profitable year ever, ever since it was found in 2003. But this is like a little bit of an inkling that this may be an inflection point.

Optimists think this could be the start of something new. It cut costs. It has a more efficient assembly line. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddy Elon, Big Snacker, and our buddy's over Tesla? Growth companies like Tesla, they better be setting records each quarter or else something is wrong. Tesla's in a puberty phase. It is in a growth phase right now, and it should be getting taller every day of every year. You know when you were like eight and you stand against the door cell?

You got the little chalk mark thing? Yep, mom writes with the marker how tall you are this year. Tommy this inch, little Julie that inch. You better be getting taller each year. If you're not getting taller, somebody called the doctor. If you got shorter, and guess what? Tesla actually got shorter in a way last quarter. Right, its revenues actually slowed.

It slipped down from $6.8 billion to $6.3 billion. Tesla says its revenues declined last quarter because more customers are leasing vehicles, which gives Tesla less like money up front. So investors are looking at it and they're saying, you know what, we'll forget the revenues. We're going to focus on those two calendar wins and the surprise profit. Tesla stock is booming, even though it's shrinking in one category. For our second story, six flag stock just dropped 12% after its earnings, which were at the most important part of the most important year. First time covering six flags on the pod. You know what we're thinking here.

It's based in Grand Prairie, Texas. And you're wondering, where do the flags come from? What are six flags? How come they didn't do five or seven? I went to Six Flags as a kid in Massachusetts. You don't think about this. No. They had the Superman ride of steel. As a child, you just focused on the calories and what you're going to eat. Right.

Yeah, exactly. We have a trivia question. Incredible trivia question. What are the six flags? Well, there were six flags over Texas at some point in its history. In other words, six states have ruled Texas. So Spain is one of them. Yes.

France is the other one. Correct. Mexico is the third. Boom. The Confederacy is the fourth. The United States is the current one. And then the trivia question within the trivia question. Yeah, this is the kicker.

This is where you get your friends. The Republic of Texas. It was its own owner of itself. So Jack and I jumped into this earnings report, Snacks style, and we noticed that Six Flags refers to itself in the opening lines as the world's largest regional theme park. And I'm like, hold up. What about Disney and Universal?

Beep, beep, beep, back it up on this. You go to Orlando, Florida for Disney World and Universal Studios. You don't go for Six Flags. World's largest region. That's like being the tallest person in first grade globally. And then we realized they must be defining themselves with largest regional theme parks. Hey, lawyers, how can we do this in a way that's actually real? And that Disney is included in the category.

Exactly. Jack and I looked it up too. Turns out it's number seven on the list of world's biggest theme parks. China's got three. US has got three and the UK's got one. Speaking of China, we noticed Fanta Wilde is one of China's biggest theme parks. Very interesting because when you look at the logos really quickly, you kind of get some magical kingdom vibes. Yeah, you get that castle. Check out Robin Hood Snacked. We posted on Twitter. I think it's the same number of turts. Yeah, the Disney logo next to the Fanta Wild logo.

In the meantime, Jack and I clearly got into this one. We were excited. We got deeper into those Six Flags earnings. And notice this is a particularly important year for the theme park. They're going for their 10th consecutive record year of sales. Congratulations. Good luck, Six Flags. And this is the biggest quarter of the year. 40% of sales occur between July and September. Purely for seasonal reasons. Kids are off from school. Can you imagine going on a date? You take her out.

You take him out. It's 20 degrees below zero. You're on the roller coaster. But also kids are off from school. They want some cotton candy and some roller coaster. Very true. All you're focused on as a kid is make sure that I can like wear shorts and eat some good food. So Santa and the elves are focused on December.

Very true. Theme parks are focused on the summer. And when it came to the numbers from Six Flags, the growth was not super impressive. No, it was 3% growth in visitors. 14 million total in the quarter. And when it came to revenues, those barely inched up 1%. So it was still a real. record quarter, but slow down in growth and the stock fell big. Investors weren't impressed.

They were disappointed. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Six Flags? This isn't an industry problem. This is a Six Flags problem. All right, with the world's largest regional theme park, its revenues only inched up 1%. But over at Disney, its theme parks hit a new record with 7% revenue growth. So what's the difference? What's drawing people at Disney? It's the content. It's the characters. It's the Marvel and Star Wars lands that they just opened. And at Universal Studios, you got the Harry Potter World with Butter Beer and Platform 9 and 3 quarters. You can't go wrong with that thing.

You can actually, I think, go into Universal with one of those ones and you're just buying stuff. Themius Parkius. Put that on the credit card. Disney and Universal are theme parks with character themes you love. Six Flags is a roller coaster park. Different. For our third and final story, Mark Zuckerberg just finished his first grilling on Capitol Hill in front of Congress that was totally dedicated to cryptocurrency. Yeah, because he's been grilled on Capitol Hill before.

He's been up there a few times. He's like, hey, Maxine, hey, Julie. This was the first financial cryptocurrency grilling. Right, right. Zach shows up. Let's set the scene for this. Well, what's he wearing it. He put on a suit for what I believe is the second time in his life.

He didn't do the... We were thinking blue tie. You know, you go Facebook proud. Nick, you're so naive. You pick a maroon tie because it's part red, part blue. Oh, beautiful. It appeals to both the Republicans and the Democrats. Whoever picked out the world. Great job with Zuck on that one.

But he should have been wearing body armor. Exactly, because the testimony is kicked off with like a bunch of insults. There was hate about its political advertising policy, its misinformation campaigns coming from abroad. You got 47 states attorneys general right now investigating Facebook. They're not in a great place when it comes to the government. Yeah, and that was for antitrust, that investigation. All right, so here's what we learned about Libra, the Zuck Bucks cryptocurrency. Because that was the focus of the meeting.

We learned how Facebook is going to pitch this cryptocurrency. It's a global cryptocurrency, and Facebook says it's going to help the unbanked and the underbanked people of this world. Here's how Zuck put it. He said on it. Here's how it goes. There are one billion people who don't have access to bank accounts, but they could through a mobile phone if the right system existed. And that system is Libra. Facebook's global cryptocurrency. Zuck wants the history books to look back and refer to him as Zuck the kind. Zuck the magnanimous. Zuck the generous.

Molecular Man. He's really hoping that they look back in them and think that he was a really good guy on this. So they're positioning this as a very, you know, make the world better situation. All right. So that's the first thing we learned. But the second thing we learned was how Zuck is going to make money off of Libra, the Facebook crypto. And Mark's like, oh, Maxine, I'm glad you asked that. You may not believe this, but that's not the first thing we think about when it comes to Libra.

Because when you're at Facebook, there's one thing you're thinking of when it comes to making money. It's ads. It always comes back to ads. That's how Facebook makes it. money. That's its business money. So Mark Zuckerberg explained that Libra will make Facebook's bread and butter ad business more valuable because there will be a little Facebook Libra button that you can pay for the thing that's being added. There's a word that Jack and I have thought would be perfect for this. It's defrictionize something. Yes. But we can't figure out what that word is.

WD40. So currently Casper Mattresses pays for a bunch of ads on Facebook. We've all seen them. Right. But if you're Casper Mattress, it'd be a lot easier if someone could buy directly via Facebook from any country in a single currency. And if you can do that, then Casper will probably sell more mattresses by advertising on Facebook, so Facebook will be able to charge more money for those ads. So Facebook said it won't make money

off the Libro Cryptocurrency with like foreign exchange fees or interest rates. It's going to make money by making it a better ad platform. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Facebook? Zuck made a big promise after that, a promise that might mean Libra's doom. He said that they won't long.

launch Libra until U.S. regulators approve of the thing. Right. So he can't launch Libra in Brazil unless U.S. regulators approve it. That was a big promise. And here's the situation right now. U.S. regulators, they're really not into Libra. Regulation of the financial industry is really, really, really important. Yeah, the United States government really focuses on this because it has to do with

collection of taxes, sanctions, anti-money laundering. Yeah, they have to prevent criminals, terrorists, drug dealers from using Zuck Bucks as their key currency of choice. So at this moment, Zuck has tied the future of Libra to whether or not the U.S. government is okay with the whole thing. Meanwhile, Zuck pledged that the Facebookers will keep on working on Libra. Shugging away. Despite the political hate, despite the defections from the Libra Council. But he's not going to wear a suit. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over here? Tesla announced... Apparently not. Tesla announced surprises in China, surprises for the Model Y, and a profit surprise. But the company's revenues did get a little bit of

shorter. Six flags swung and missed on its most important quarter of the year. Because Marvel characters are more fun than roller coasters are. Mark Zuckerberg promised not to launch Libra without U.S. regulators' blessing. And he's not going to charge bank fees. He's going to charge ad fees. Now, time for our snack fact today. This one's kind of like a double header situation. The round pizza boxes that we mentioned yesterday as the snack fact of the day. From Pizza Hut delicious. We tried to... No, we didn't. From Pizza, they're eliminating the waste in the corners of the boxes. Very critical. Those were actually developed by Zoom Inc.

A company based right here in Silicon Valley. It's a startup. We found that out from Katie Warmouth Jaros who pointed out to us yesterday. She's from San Francisco. Also interesting point about round pizza boxes. Doesn't end there because Amar Kalalia and San Francisco had another snack fact for it. In 2010, Apple, the tech company that made the iPhone. It happens to be a little

obsessed with design. Apple patented its own designed circular pizza box just for their cafeterias. They're using them at their new headquarters. Must be pretty cool. Someone at Apple sent a picture we want to see this thing. I bet you it looks like that little wheel on the old iPod. I mean, you could probably build a car out of one of these things.

Build an Apple car out of these things. Yes. Snackers, loved having you with us today. This one felt like better than yesterday's. Let's do this tomorrow. Always. We'll be there tomorrow. Wait.

Let's do it. The Robin Hood Snacks podcast you just heard reflects the opinions of only the host 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.