The Best One Yet - “The Un-zuckening” — Facebook’s InstaExit. McD’s toy drama. Quantumscape’s 40-year invention.

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

McDonald’s is facing its biggest fight of the year, and it’s because of… Happy Meals. Quantumscape’s stock jumped because it’s a patent puppy, not profit puppy. And Zuck’s being forced to sell Instagram and Whatsapp — we’re calling it the “ACDC” problem.$QS $MCD $FBGot 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 Snacks Daily. It is Thursday, the new Friday. December 10th. Yesterday afternoon, we had three stories picked. Yeah, we did. We did. We did. And then Zuck got Zucked. Yeah, you got sucked. Jack. Are we pulling up Peyton Manning here? Is that what we're doing? Yes, we're calling an audible at the line of scrimmage. Omaha. Omaha. So we banged out a new story on Facebook, whipped out the quick research and happened to have a T-boy on our hands. This is actually our best snacks daily ever. Jack. First story, what do we got?

The biggest fight of the year is going down at McDonald's. This is actually about happy meals. It's about happy meals. Haven't had a happy meal in years. Can you make the adult happy meal happen? How many times we have to ask for this McDonald's? I'm waiting for the adult stroller, actually. For our second story, scientists will remember the day that Quantum Scape finally did it.

We're talking a 40-year breakthrough in battery technology for our third and final story. Are we calling this Fexit? Are we? Insta-exit. Maybe we could go with that. We had a third one that I really liked you. Quidogram? Let's go with Quiddogram.

We're trying to come up. with a new portmanteau for Facebook being forced to sell Instagram. Portmanteau. Snackers, for those of us who didn't get a $750 on our English, yesterday we told you there was protein in the air. That's right. First, there was meat-based meat. Then there was plant-based meat. Yeah, and now there's a startup making air-based meat. They're pulling the meat out of the air. But Snacker Parker Rex from Florida, sounds like Spider-Man's cousin. Terrific name. He pointed out on Twitter the day after,

there's actually air in all of our snacks. That's right. There's air in our snacks. And by snacks, we mean there is air in a bag of chips. Cheetos are by far the worst offender. Fifty-nine percent of that bag is just air. It's brutal. Meanwhile, Doritos isn't that much better. It's 48 percent air in a bag of Doritos. At least we got majority food in that one. Pringles, on the other hand, is a generous company. Only 28 percent air because geometry. Yeah, Jack, you got to respect that a tube technology. They really pioneered that early. Freitos, however, is the kindest of all the snack companies. 81% food, 19% air in that bag. 19% air. So generous. Overall, though, snackers, the average amount of air in a bag of chips that you pop open,

49% air. Next time you buy a bag of chips, ask for a 51% discount. All right, so Jack and I are doing the math on this thing, whipped out the old whiteboard. So you're listening to snacks daily right now for your digestible financial news, which is full of words that are 100% air. That's right, words are air. But not all snacks are chips, and yet all chips are snacks. But those chip snacks are actually half air. Ipso facto, therefore, GED, all snacks are actually air. 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 are about to hear ain't food. It's air candy. They don't reflect the views of the robberhood family. It's all informational just so. You know, we're not recommending any securities. No. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale about security. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC.

For our first story, 46 states, D.C, Guam, and the U.S. federal government just legally poked Mark Zucker. Facebook is being forced to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. Jack, this is technically not a zucking, but it feels like someone got zucking. Feels like the zuckiest of all zucks. By the way, the other four states, Georgia, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Alabama. We looked it up. Process of elimination by Jack and I.

We just want credit. Social media has become one of the most important institutions of our society. It's basically the de facto source of news and information for most Americans. Jack, can I take a little offense to that being a news show? Very much so. We're taking offense, yes. But Facebook achieved that kind of importance by pursuing an ACDC method of growth and domination. That's what we call it.

the ACDC method of growth. That means acquiring, copying, and destroying companies. And that's how Facebook now controls three of the most popular messaging and social media companies in the world. We're talking Instagram, what's app in Facebook, all owned by Facebook. Oh, by the way, they also own Messenger, which is probably the fourth most popular information app in the world. Also, by the way, that whole acquiring, copying, and destroying thing, technically that's Congress's language. They say acquiring copying and destroying. Jack and I threw on the sea because we thought ACDC sounded better. Right. Although historically, we've used the term zucking to describe Facebook's conduct. And you're welcome attorneys general to use that because 48 attorneys general plus the United

States say it was illegal for Facebook to crush competition according to their accusations yesterday. And that's why after years of investigation, the government finally dropped a major, major lawsuit yesterday. Yep, Facebook, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp Messenger. it must sell off, according to the government, Instagram and WhatsApp. We almost didn't cover this story because we fully expected this lawsuit to drop. It was just a matter of when. Jack and I were speaking on the phone decided it didn't make sense to cover this story in today's snacks. But then we decided to cover it because we did not expect that aggressive punishment.

When we saw that they had to sell Instagram and WhatsApp, we almost dropped our phone. Nick did drop his phone. It was Zucksit. It was quidogram. It was WhatsApp. It was Face it. It was Quiddogram. It was WhatsApp. plant. We couldn't even come up with a great term for this. There were so many options. The lawsuit says that the most egregious of Facebook's crimes was buying up competition before they became a threat to Facebook's business. So, like case and point here, people got smartphones with cameras, Instagram grew until 2012 when Facebook acquired Instagram. A couple years later, as people use the internet to message for free on those smartphones, WhatsApp grew until 2014 when

Facebook acquired it. Now, both those big acquisitions six and eight years ago, those were approved by United States regulators, but they clearly shouldn't have been approved by United States regulators. They didn't understand the impact of those approvals, Nick, but Mark Zuckerberg, he understood how huge it was that he was acquiring this competition. So now the U.S. government's looking back on their mistake and saying, we have a punishment that is beautifully simple to fix this situation. We're basically going to ask Facebook to control Z this thing. Yep, they're going to unzuck those that have been zucked. Facebook must spin off Instagram, IPO it or sell it to somebody. and let it trade and operate as a separate company distinct from Facebook with a different billing,

different headquarters. And they got to do the same thing with WhatsApp, which means you may be thinking right now, of course, Facebook stock plummeted on where it's got to get rid of its two other profit puppies. Actually, the stock only fell by about 2% yesterday afternoon. Yeah, for a couple of reasons. The main one being Facebook shareholders will get the proceeds if Facebook has to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp. Instagram's not getting stolen from Facebook.

They're going to sell it. And it's probably worth over $100 billion. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddy, Mark Zuckerberg? Imagine a world snackers with a split up Facebook. Take a second and just imagine it. Nick and I were thinking about it yesterday afternoon. Yeah, we were. And we actually thought it would be pretty cool for snacks daily and pretty cool for the stock market.

Hey, you're going to get three different stocks out of this. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Jack, you think of what I'm thinking here? Imagine the ticker symbol possibilities. Jack, 4 p.m. Saturday, my place, we'll come up with a whole list. I'll bring the whiteboard. We also thought this could be great because it provides choices for consumers. Yeah, decisions that Mark Zuckerberg makes profoundly impact society right now. And finally, if you don't like Mark Zuckerberg's decisions, you can actually protest by going to Instagram,

a different company not also under Mark Zuckerberg's control. And then this would also be good for information. Presently, misinformation spreading on Facebook is great for Facebook's business. It's a perverse incentive. It drives outrage. It drives confusion and that drives more scrolling. It's also great because there's so many possible wild ideas that could come from this. Yeah, we're just throwing this one out here. Jack and I came up with it 20 minutes ago. Maybe TikTok merges with Instagram to legitimize TikTok in the U.S. and satisfy regulators. The possibilities are endless. But Snackers, Facebook will delay this for years by fighting it in court with millions and millions of dollars in lawyers. In the meantime, though, this lawsuit could change markets, social media, and, you know, all of global society.

For our second story, McDonald's just started a war. And the Helen of Troy that sparked this conflict. The Happy Meal. It's a great visual, Jack. McDonald's, by the way, honestly, Jack and I were looking at the company. We thought they were going through a comeback the last couple months. The stock's up. They brought back the McRib again.

Again, again. They're bringing back apple pies, the rectangular ones, not the circle ones. Boom, and then we're hit with this like random nugget of information. Happy meal prices could jump next year. No! Come on! So we jump in snacks out and check out what's going on at the 14,000 McDonald's stores. But in reality, only 1,000 are actually owned by McDonald's.

The other 13,000 are franchises. Yeah, it's a classic franchise situation, but we were shocked at how many were franchises. Because McDonald's is going to provide the franchisee, like the logo, commercials, branding recipes, like the burger flipping gear, all that good stuff. But it's an actual local entrepreneur who's going to own like a handful of McDonald's restaurants

in the tri-state area, and they pay a cut of their sales to McDonald's corporate for the guidance and the burger flipping gear. 93% of the business of McDonald's is really just run by someone else. so you think that someone else, the franchisees, have like a whole bunch of leverage when you hear how many there are. Doesn't seem that way, though. McDonald's is calling the shots, using their parental power to tell franchisees what to do. And here's what's so fascinating, Snackers, all that tension comes down to the happy meal.

Jack, favorite happy meal. The happy meal. Something I haven't had in 20 years, but I have very fond memories of it. I remember I had like the Riddler mug in the 90s, which I drank milk out of frequently. It was scary. You're a big Batman fan. You must love that. I remember the monopoly pieces, not Happy Meal related. If you get two squares, you could win a Jeep. You get halfway there. I know what you're thinking.

I know what you're thinking. But nobody got that second square. Two out of three, you're daydreaming about the house in Hawaii. You don't even go back to work. Now, before we start talking about like our favorite monopoly squares, Pennsylvania Avenue, by the way, Park Avenue. Franchisees were getting a $300 monthly subsidy, like an allowance from the parent company, to pay for these Happy Meal toys.

But then, just like this week, McDonald said, hey franchisees, we're not going to pay you that allowance, that subsidy that you typically put toward the Happy Meal toys. You have to use that money to buy technology. Basically, a no-soup for-use situation came out of nowhere. Yeah, franchisee said, we'd actually rather focus on our family business and have Happy Meal toys, not digital kiosks for like some 23-year-old who's buying a hash brown at like 8 in the morning. And then McDonald's is like, I'm the parent company, I'm a billion-dollar company. What are you going to do about it? So the franchisees then basically through a tantrum. Yes, according to the Wall Street Journal, a bunch of franchisees are planning to

up the price of the Happy Meal by 20 cents to $3.96 in order to pay for the toys that they now have to buy themselves. Basically, parent McDonald's is saying, hey, no more using the allowance to buy candy, you now have to use the allowance to buy books. And they have to be e-books. Definitely the e-books. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at McDonald's? We're seeing a pandemic pattern. Yep. Ruthless prioritization of tech. Jack and I are actually seeing a whole bunch of companies use the year 2020 to invest in the decade of the 2020s.

But to invest in technology, that means companies have to cut things that aren't core to their business, like apparently the toys and happy meals. Another perfect example, Jack and I noticed this week, Disney just ended its classic Disney radio station because they're going to put all that money toward Disney Plus streaming instead. We just announced yesterday that Uber is ending itself-driving ambition

so that it can repurpose that money to food delivery, which is their future. Get this, on top of that whole Happy Meal drama, McDonald's is also going to charge franchisees $10,000 to force them to upgrade their smart drive-thrusers, they're ordering kiosks and all their techie app orders. Basically, little Timmy, upgrade that drive-thru system, stat. Yeah, or we're taking you to Wendy's. It's the pandemic pattern snackers' ruthless tech prioritization ASAP. For our third and final story, for 40 years, scientists have tried to figure out the ultimate

electric car battery. Quantum scape. A tiny little publicly traded company, they say they figured it out. I'm talking quantum scape here. Based in San Jose, got $500 million in funding from Bill Gates and from Volkswagen and got money from Stanford. And it's the title of probably the next three James Bond movies. They said back in September that after 10 years of extremely hard work with a lot of scientific goggles, a lot hard work. They figured it out. It's called the Solid State Battery. But they didn't show the details. No, they didn't. But they did go public just a couple months ago. Actually, just in November, they went public via SPAC. And they were worth just a couple billion dollars, which is a fraction of a lift. You probably weren't paying attention to them. But then on Tuesday, they issued a press

release that proved they had cracked the 40-year-old puzzle on the ultimate electric car battery. That's right. They publicly revealed test results to show how ultimate their ultimate new electric car battery performs. All right. Get this, Jack. Charges two times faster. 80% long. range. It's cheaper. It's got a life of 100,000 miles. Billy Mays here. What else you got? Nick, a couple hundred thousand miles, this thing could fight against a New England Subaru. Bold claim from a Vermonter, though. In the meantime, they issued this press release over a Quantum Scape, and it was basically full of science. That's how we could sum it up. Yeah, so we can't fully vouch for it. We can't vouch for the science, but Quantum Scape, fortunately, founded Nobel Prize

winner in chemistry who could vouch for the science. So this is a major breakthrough. This is like, this is discovering absolute zero kind of a thing. Right. It's like calculating the next thousand digits of pie. Yeah, QuantumScape found Waldo is what we're trying to say. Now, this is a huge deal for the future of electric cars because electric cars aren't really cars. They're basically rolling batteries. It's a huge like door-sized electric battery with four wheels, another wheel as the steering wheel, and a bunch of cup holders. That's an electric car. For electric cars, The battery is the most expensive part. On average, they're like $15,000 for just the battery. It's also the most important part of an electric car the battery is.

It's a pain when your phone's dead, but it's worse when you're stuck on exit 3, off I-91, and add a spin drift because your car battery died. The battery is also the most inconvenient and uncertain and, like, anxiety-inducing part of an electric car. Yeah, honestly, like, best-case scenario, it's going to take 30 minutes to fully charge your electric car battery, or more likely it's going to take hours. And then what if it runs out yet? Range anxiety, 250 miles. It's a thing. So Snackers, we're looking at the situation here.

In 2035, all new cars in California must be electric. And it's the same situation in the UK. Despite those limitations on batteries, Germany is still going all in an on-electric too, requiring all gas stations to include electric chargers as well. So when you're thinking electric cars, the real opportunity of electric cars is actually in improving the battery life. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over a quantum of solace?

This isn't a company yet. So far, it's just a single technology. That's right, Snackers. QuantumScape has a billion dollars in cash right now that they're focusing on probably scaling production. Yeah, manufacturing these batteries that with a breakthrough technology they just invented, that's going to require a bunch of huge factories.

Jack, how many factories they have that are huge? Zero. They have zero factories so far. They're basically just a lab. Yeah, so it would take years to develop. Oh, and plus, there are a whole bunch of other companies trying to crack the exact same invention as them. Now, instead of that risky year-long manufacturing scaling process, quantumscape could instead

just license the technology to existing car companies that need batteries now. That's right, Jack and I are thinking they could sell their technology to like a Tesla or a Volkswagen. Just like Gore-Tex sells their waterproof technology to a North Face or a Patagonia. In that case, Jack, what kind of company would you really say QuantumScape is? We're calling it a patent puppy. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us? there. In a major cousin, which is Zuck backwards, Facebook has been ordered to sell Instagram and WhatsApp. Lawsuits are going to drag this thing out, but honestly, it could change markets,

change society, and probably change all of us personally. For our second story, McDonald's is cutting the toy allowance to focus on tech improvements instead. And we're noticing a pandemic pattern over here. Save money on the non-core stuff, invest in the tech stuff. For our third and final story, Quantum Scapes investors got very excited because Quantum Scape scientists got very excited. Little humbling, though, because they got just one invention, although it could become a patent puppy. Now, time for our snack factor today. This one tweeted in by a legendary snacker who just goes by the name, snack factor, which we love. Turns out, if you live to be 85, congratulations, you will have spent 973 hours, almost 40 days of your life, just tying your shoes. Now, we know

you're thinking, that does assume you didn't start tying your own shoes until you were five years old. It's also a nice ad for a slip-on company. Snackers, you look fantastic today. I got to go get to work because I got to find Jack an adult stroller. Apparently that's the Christmas script I got to get it. Imagine, like laying down in a bed in Central Park and having someone else push you around while you're warm and cozy. Jack, I'm picturing myself.

I make the left on 79th Street. Make my way toward the Central Park Zoo. This would be a blast we could pod from the stroller. That would be wonderful. Let's make it happen. In the meantime, Jack will yell out from that stroller. H-Y-H-Y-S-D. Have you had your snacks daily?

If you know, you know. And before we go, happy birthday to snacker, Bridchew over in Beijing. And Paulina Horowitz in Washington, D.C., and Tyler Self is in Barnesville, Ohio. And Joanna Richter in Charleston, South Carolina. And Andy Rose in West Hartford, Connecticut. And Divi B. in San Francisco. And Keene Collins in San Jose.

And Mike Eisen in Hendersonville, North Carolina. And congrats on the graduation Miguel Silva over in Tennessee. Congrats on getting hitched to John and Rachel in Lafayette, Louisiana. Meanwhile, Mark and Kathy Ogloff, they got an anniversary down in Annapolis, Maryland. Jackson Wells and Megan Perra. Happy anniversary. Oh, by the way, Jackson works for a snack company. This is Jack. I own stock of QuantumScape. 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, 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.