The Best One Yet - “Thou art fit and proper” — Uber’s London trip. Roku’s home theaterization. ShipBob’s anti-Amazon Alliance.

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

Uber stock jumped 3% on a ruling in London that we think begins Uber’s new era. Roku is thinking 6-months ahead about your entertainment needs, so it’s turning your streaming TV into a streaming movie theater. And our “almost Unicorn of the Day” is ShipBob, which snagged $68M. It’s playing its part in the anti-Amazon rebel alliance.$ROKU $UBERGot 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's Tuesday, September 29. Nick, I got a disease. And the only prescription is more takeaway. Let's cowbell, more T-B-O-Y. For our first story, Snackers, Uber Stock jumped 3% yesterday

because the Queen has deemed it fit and proper to operate in London. Snackers, this is calling for a nighting of a new era of Uber. For our second story, if you want to sell your product online, you could join the evil empire known as Amazon.com. Or you could join the Scrappy Rebel Alliance and let Chip Bob get your stuff to customers. For our third and final story, Roku, already turned your dumb TV into a smart TV. Now it's turning your smart living room into a smart movie theater. But Snackers, we want to give you heads up on the most important IPO of this year.

Get this. Korean boy band, BTS, aka Beyond the Scene, is going public. They're known as the Beatles of Korean Pop, but they have seven members. not four. Yeah, they threw in an extra paul and maybe a couple of Johns. That's how you do this. Also, all their music is in Korean. Only one of them speaks English, so totally different than the Beatles actually. Now, if you're BTS faithful, you know that they hit the scene a couple years ago, filling the boy band void left when one direction disbanded. A void that's been extremely void among Nick and me and probably all of us here. Some of us are still dealing with it. And

BTS became the first YouTube video ever to hit 100 million views in just the first 24 hours. But this IPO is critical because you know that like, I wish I could buy stock in Beyonce feeling Jack? Feeling it right now? Well, you can't on Beyonce, but you can with BTS. Big hit entertainment is the management company behind this K-pop group and they're going public this week on the Korean Stock Exchange. Now here's the interesting thing.

Some fans are buying the stock as a form of memberabilia. Other fans are waiting to buy the stock of BTS until the band members' birthdays. Jack and I can't give investment advice. We're not considering this an investment strategy. should consider. I think BTS needs to pack some disclosures into their songs. Snackers, a Korean boy band is turning their talent into a stock.

Groundbreaking moment for public stock markets. 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 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. Right. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC. Member Fenra slash SIPC. For our first story, Uber stock just jumped 3%

because it's been deemed fit and proper by the city of London. A.K.A. It just got its driver's license back. We're in England. Quick reminder here, Snackers. The situation over at Uber this year is that it's still a really bad year over at Uber. The pandemic has caused bookings to fall by 73%.

for Uber. This company's had to lay off 14% of its workforce. They even had to kind of let go of their bike business jump by selling it to line. So Uber's like in desperate need of something positive fun. They need to celebrate at their like virtual Zoom happy hour on Fridays. Instead, they keep getting treated like Prince Harry over in the UK. London is Uber's biggest European market. 3.5 million Londoners have downloaded the Uber app. They've also got 45,000 drivers over there and yet they keep kind of kicking Uber on the side. They don't even care about them. Uber has lost its license in the city of London twice. Twice. Most recently getting grounded last November. And they were pretty harsh on the rulings here saying that Uber kept on having historic failings

and quote unquote a pattern of failures. But if there's one thing Uber is really good at, it's lawyering. Yep. So they've been in a constant state of appealing this case and they haven't actually had their operations banned in London yet. So courtesy of a bunch of legal fees, Uber could keep operating. Megan Marco could still order her Uber black and everyone was kind of happy-ish. Yesterday, the city of London has finally kind of given its blessing to Uber by extending its license for 18 months to operate. Big move because before, here's the issue Uber was facing. Apparently a bunch of unauthorized drivers had uploaded other photos and then been setting up accounts. This is what the city of London was upset about and grounded Uber about in the first place. 15,000 trips were made

when you thought Timmy was driving you. It was actually Tammy pretending to be Timmy. Awkward. So instead, Ubers instituted this whole new AI system that creepily analyzes the driver's faces, ensuring that Timmy isn't Tammy. The city of London considers this new system fit and proper and no longer a threat to public safety. And if you're Uber, that's the incredibly low standard angle. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Uber? Uber's transformation looks complete. Snackers, let's look back on Uber pre-IPO. They had a swash-buckling and rule-breaking leader named Travis Kalanick. They purely focused on rides and hoping to do something with self-driving. They aggressively pursued international expansion at every corner of the globe. They had no pink mustache and weren't doing anything woke like Lyft was doing.

Oh, and they allegedly were spying on their regulators' Uber accounts so that the regulators couldn't regulate Uber. Pre-IPO Uber is not the kind of company you take home to mom and dad. That's exactly right. Post-IPO Uber, on the other hand, is sitting at the head of the table at Thanksgiving. Yeah, you want to show this thing off. You got a swab new leader in Dara. Uber Eats is this shocking profit puppy that's come out of nowhere.

They stopped getting into all these international markets. They're just focusing on a few key ones. They even sold off a lot of their ride hell investments to focus on the core biz. Oh, plus they've got a whole feel-good side of the business now. They're partnering with public transportation, and they're pursuing more creative ideas than Lyft is. Those changes we just summarized between pre-IPO Uber and post, those were investments, two years worth of investments in self-betterment. So this big legal win in London, that's a return on these investments.

Post-IPO Uber looks a lot better than pre-IPO Uber. For our second story, turn your dumb TV into a home movie theater for only $130. That's from Roku, whose stock jumped 2% because it's thinking about the movie theater gap. Snackers, you know the buzzwords right now. A lot of big tech out there. A lot of tech giants up to no good. And the people who are just like using a lot of syllables go with a lot of tech monopolies out there. Roku, on the other hand, is like a little tech hobbit.

Thou shalt, you could pass. Actually, you are small enough. You can pass Roku. Dendolph lets this little Hobbit Froto pass. In the meantime, you got to call Frodo because the stock for Roku's jumped from $33 to start 2019 to 184 today. Roku has grown up to be a $22 billion company, but that's still really tiny compared to Apple and Amazon, who it competes against, which are a hundred times bigger than Roku.

That's why Jack and I like to refer to Roku as the people's champ. of streaming. It's dongle does the same thing as Apple TV, but it's way cheaper than an Apple TV. We're talking about a company that punches above its way class because Roku's connected TV controls, get this, 43 million American households. When you control the living room, you control information. So what Jack and I found fascinating here is that Roku just announced a whole new device to make your TV smarter ASAP. It's called the Roku Stream Bar for $129. They're not branding guys. They're really kind of, it's more of a product team over there. Well, they're branding this as an all-in-one device for TV, streaming, and sound.

It's like $129 is an instant MFA for your TV kind of thing. So the first thing it does, it connects your TV to a smart device with an HDMI cord. Then you get the streaming. Pretty much every video and music app is accessible with like a Roku remote. Here's the novel part, the sound. It's a 14-inch-long device with front and side speakers, which they claim have surprisingly big sound. Yeah, bonus feature, Jack and I notice here, they have an auto-reiber. correction for those insanely annoyingly loud commercials. More on that after the break.

Doritos Locos! One time only! They're going to turn that Doritos guy down to like 10%. Doritos Locos guy is definitely at 140% usually. Do less Doritos Locos. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who we can hear all the way over at Roku? Roku is thinking ahead trying to fill the movie theater gaps. Snackers, picture yourself for a moment, just four months from now. You're going to have longer hair. You're going to have lounier clothes. You're still getting through all the hoarded cans of ragu you got in your fridge. And it's freezing because it's January. And you don't want to leave home because we're probably in the second wave of COVID-19. Sorry to be like negative here, but this is the truth. This takeaway took a dark turn. So we're going to turn it back

to Disney, which just delayed nearly all. It's movie debuts by a full year. Your Disney turn just took a dark turn. So even if theaters could safely reopen, there really wouldn't be any movies you'd be wanting to see or play. Snackers, this winter, there won't be any new Star Wars movies. movies and theaters. No Black Widow from Marvel. No A Quiet Place Part 2 that want to check out on Friday night. So we find ourselves with an entertainment-starved country struggling financially and mid-pandemic. So Roku just made a $130 device to make your home feel kind of like a movie theater. They probably started planning this back when the pandemic started, but Roku was thinking one year ahead. For our third and final story, Shibbob is like your buddy who helps you move,

and they just raised $68 million. $7. ShipBob is joining the anti-Amazon revolution. Snackers, we got to talk about your wallet for a second because your overall spending, it's down just a little bit, just 4% down. That's according to a consumer spending report, but online purchases are up by 45% compared to last year. So you're spending basically the same amount, you're spending a whole lot more of that online. Which brings us to Chicago Bay ShipBob founded in 2014 because shipping physical things is hard. Yeah, and Facebook loves connecting people. Chicago loves connecting things. Chicago loves logistics.

Now, this company, Shipop, they've been doubling in size every year. They're about to hit 100 million revenues for 2020. Now, this is a sumo company. We're straight up missing out because it's a private company. If we wanted to invest in the stock, we couldn't. But their latest investor is SoftBank of WeWork fame. And this looks like the new SoftBank, because ShipBob isn't just an app like connecting pets to Pet Walkers.

No, we're actually shocked that SoftBank wanted to get involved in something behind the scenes. ShipBob's business, though, can be best described as shipping as a service. It's the other SaaS. That's because ShipBob is like that one buddy of yours you can always rely on to help you move when your lease is expired. You got one week left. It's the end of the month. And who are you going to text? Ship Bob.

Nick and I actually have a long email chain with ShipBob. Because before we joined Robin Hood, at Market Snacks, we were selling T-Boy T-Shirts, and we used ShipBob to do the shipping. Here's how it went down. So here's how ShipBob comes into your list. life if you're an online store. Basically, your online store life is split between before someone makes a purchase and then after someone makes a purchase. Before the purchase, you need a bunch of services, marketing, a newsletter, website design. Yeah. You need to design the product, display the product, and figure out how it's going to get paid for online. So ShipBob jumps in after someone's done the

transaction, after they bought the t-shirt, and they kind of take care of all the stuff from there. ShipBob held our t-shirts in their fulfillment center, boxed them up, Yep, slapped on a label, put them on trucks, coordinated delivery. As we said before, Chicago does logistics. So, ShipBob does the part that requires real estate and lots of human beings like moving packages. So you can see why the business is booming while small businesses don't want a lease or own a warehouse and are selling a whole lot of stuff online. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Chip Bob? The anti-Amazon Rebel Alliance?

It's kind of like the 13 colonies. The Naggers, let's say you're getting the itch, Tino, sell some slamming salmon, colored sweaters somewhere. You could put those gorgeous sweaters on Amazon and get two-day shipping for all your customers, but then you've got to compete against a billion other sellers who are also on Amazon.com. Alternative here, you could join the anti-Amazon Rebel Alliance, which is made up of a whole bunch of business-helping brands led by Shopify. Set up slamming salmon sweaters.com through Squarespace or Wix. Then you're using Shopify for like all the technology behind the website. Then you're probably using Square or Stripe to handle the payments. And you're

You got to have all the data held somewhere, so you've got Microsoft or Google doing your cloud computing. In this Rebel Alliance, ShipBob is like Delaware. Yeah. It's playing its part in the war against Amazon by doing the shipping. And within these rebellious colonies, Shopify stock has tripled since March because it's helping all these companies sell online, but off Amazon. So Shopify is the Virginia of this analogy, and we think ShipBob is a nice acquisition target for Shopify.

Finally, just become the USA, the United Services, against it. Amazon. Jack Kenyo whip up the takeaways for us over there. Uber's blessing in London is symbolic of its transformation. Pre-IPO Uber, breaking things and making enemies. Post-IPO Uber, getting knighted. For our second story, Roku's latest product knows you're starving for blockbuster entertainment. So its stream bar turns your TV into a movie theater. For our third and final story, ShipBob does shipping as a service. You can sell your stuff on Amazon or join the Rebel Alliance. Well, when you say it like that. It just sounds better. Now, time bar is snack back to the day. This one tweeted in by Ryan Everhart in lovely Rockwell, Texas.

Snackers, when you're in New York and trying to zoom somebody in Istanbul, it's not through like the space through Elon satellites. No, no, no. It's through physical cables. And AT&T has over 440,000 miles of underground sea cables, technically undersea cables. Those cables go to the deepest part of the sea, aka 33,000 feet deep. We couldn't figure. out how many lifts that was, but we can tell you it's one Mount Everest. I think that's one Mount Everest and change. Transporting snacks brought to you by Ryan. Now before we go, Snackers, big shout out to Lev and Mattan and Hader and Shalev it in Tenafly, New Jersey, aka the Adler family, who snacks while carpooling. Also, big congrats to Jack Trey Wells just kicked off his MBA down in Texas. And happy birthday to Alex Lowe in Austin, Texas. And to Ali Callan and

Richfield, Connecticut. And John Gillespie in Princeton, New Jersey. And Jose, Luis Navi 3rd in Merced, California. Hannah Torino, Vancouver, Canada, and Saw Jin Shaw in Portland, Oregon. Happy birthday, Ignacio Griffin in Quito, Ecuador. And to Leon Pan in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And Hunter Petit in North Royalty in Ohio. And Adrian Visher in Waterfield, Maine.

And Sayyam in Santa Clara, California. And Tony Retrovato in Redding, Pennsylvania. And Brianna Marshall in San Francisco. And happy birthday, Dan Cohn in Boston, Massachusetts. Remember, ask Deborah H-Y-H-Y-S-D. Have you had your snack? Daily. We'll see you tomorrow. Can't wait. If you know, you know.

This is Jack. Nick owned stock of Shopify and Square, and I own stock of Amazon. 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, 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 us. 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.