The Best One Yet - Twitter bans political ads, Mirror raises $34M, and Fiat Chrysler & Peugeut are mega-merging

Episode Date: October 31, 2019

Jack Dorsey just took a jab at Mark Zuckerberg by banning political ads from Twitter, via tweet. Peloton rival Mirror snagged $34M in fresh funding from Lululemon, Karlie Kloss, and Steve Cohen’s hedge fund, so we’re looking at who could buy them. And Fiat Chrysler and Peugeut are planning to merge to create Earth’s 4th biggest car company, because merged car companies live longer.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 31st. Snackers, Lyft, Facebook, Apple, and Starbucks all reported earnings. Boom, trick-or-treat situation. And the Fed cut interest rates again. Everyone's getting candy these days.

But that's all you need to know. There's nothing more to those stories. We're bringing three different stories, which are the best ones yet. These are our snackable three. Jack, what are we kicking it off? Twitter just banned all political ads. Jack Dorsey announced it via Twitter, although we think he could have done a different movie. He should have announced it via paid political ad on Facebook.

Easy wins. That would have been the ultimate troll. Second story, Jack. Fiat Pujo is about to become the fourth biggest car company in the world. Love the way you pronounce that. Fiat Pujo. Because if you're not merging in the car industry, you're a dying. Third and final story, the not quite unicorn of the day is mirror.

Just look at it. Look at yourself. It just raised $34 million from a model. Okay. A hedge fund. Interesting. And an a athlete company, we mentioned on this pot a lot. So Jack and I were like, you know what?

Let's see who may acquire miracle. But before we get into that, Snackers, we've been through a lot together. We had the MeWork not IPO. We talk about profit puppies every day. We got that chicken of the tree situation going on. We frequently ask you for the most creative ticker symbols. And you always deliver because we love you. We've seen your love on social media.

We've seen your love by listening to the pod every day. We've seen your love by checking out our newsletter. We see a lot of love. But if you want to take your love one step further and support snacks daily, you should check out the Robin Hood app. They're the investing platform that also just introduced a cash management feature that comes with a debit card. There's a waiting list for the debit card. It's a beautiful debit card. It looks really sharp. You know, on this pod, I always say this is blank and I own shares of blank.

When Jack and I say that, that's because we're buying these stocks on Robin Hood the app. Yep, you can do stocks, you can do options, you can do crypto. It's a phenomenal, easy to use platform. But Snackers, because we love you so much, we are going to be giving away a free stock to Snackers who subscribe and download Robin Hood today. listeners, you get one stock from like Lyft, Fitbit, or Microsoft. We just covered Fitbit in the story of the other. All you got to do is go to Snackspodcast. Robinhood.com, and once your account set up, you get that free stock. Boom, it's just like hanging out waiting for you.

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rain food is 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 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 twitter just banned all political ads on its platform and that puts a lot of pressure on facebook nick this story It's about misinformation, and I feel like we should define what misinformation is it lies? What is it? It is lies.

It's not just lies. It's also any false info or information intended to trick or deceive you. It sounds like we got Miriam Webster over here, ladies and gentlemen. Miriam, great name. Now, this all began with a tweet from the most famous four-letter Twitter handle of all time. J-A-C-K. At Jack. At Jack.

I tried to get it. I tried to get it. No, you did. It was going to be a birthday game. I tried. I was about seven years too late. Yeah, it didn't really work out. Jack Dorsey founded Twitter.

Right, so he gets to tweet out, and what he tweeted out was a tweet with 10 follow-up tweets. It was a long thread, and it read like a manifesto. It was not like a press release, but essentially was a press release on this huge new development over Twitter. Context. Facts are under attack, and social media is the venue of choice for misinformation. It's gotten bad, it's got a nasty, so bad that U.S. politicians have, like, jumped into the misinformation game. This hit ahead earlier this month when President Trump posted a political ad that included false info, and Facebook approved it and took money for it.

And then Elizabeth Warren posted an ad that also had egregiously false information, which Facebook then approved as well. Yeah, that false information was that Mark Zuckerberg endorsed President Trump for president. Not true. So this is the awkward situation. Twitter and Facebook are dedicated to fighting financial information this fall. Facebook for a couple years. Maybe a couple years, but I feel like Pumpkin Spice Lattee season has been there. They've gotten really into sweater weather with this.

Facebook has 40,000 content moderators who are bringing their A-game for this. political year, their job is to take down and flag and remove bad false misinformation on Facebook. Spoiler alert, it's not a fun job, but guess what? Turns out there are two big exceptions for these content moderators for things that they don't take down. Any posts from political leaders don't get fact check. Any post that's a political ad doesn't get fact check. So whenever it's a political ad or a political post from a political leader, those content moderators stand down. Now, Zuck was at Congress last week kind of defending this policy, and he basically said, you know what, I don't want a referee free speech. He said it's not a tech company's job to control free speech and defended his decision.

So here's the news that was in that tweet we mentioned from at Jack with 10 follow-up tweets. Twitter just banned political ads on Twitter. They're not open for business. This campaign season. They're worried that it's too easy to create fake videos. They can mislead, and they don't want to be responsible for influencing votes, entire elections, you know, the course of it. One of those like 10 tweets in the threadneck at Jack said, this isn't about free expression. This is about paying for reach, which is what political ads do.

Exactly. Now, politicians will still not be fact-checked on like the regular tweets, but their ads will be. Exactly. So Twitter won't be making money off of it. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies here over Twitter? This puts pressure on Zuck and Facebook. This is going to hurt Twitter's short-term profits, but there's a long-term specific game. Nick, campaign season is when like ABC, Fox, CBS, all those single-digit channels.

They make all the money on those obnoxious political ads. We're doing like that wallet motion with our hands, like counting the bills over here. And now Twitter's not going to make money on any of those political ads. That's the short-term pain for Twitter, but there is a long-term gain. Credibility, trust, belief that the platform is trying to kill misinformation. Twitter is sacrificing short-term profits to build up the long-term trust that you'll commit to the platform. Twitter can now say it's doing more than Facebook to fight misinformation and isn't directly making money off misinformation through ads. Zuck can't really say those things.

For our second story, Pujo and Fiat Chrysler are reportedly merging, and that would create the fourth biggest car company on earth. And the French government, oh, what on 6% of this company? The podcast goes to Napoleon Bonaparte over here. You want to jump further into this? No, I'm done. That's six out of my French. Pugége and Fiat Chrysler.

If they merged, $48 billion of money would be thrown around. We got 6% of this deal, though, is the same. going to be owned by the French government. So Fiat Chrysler was founded in 1890s. We double check that one. It's got Italian roots. Very true. Its headquarters are in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Like a study abroad situation. And it's got an American

profit puppy named Chrysler. Now FIAT, Fiat, Fiat stands for Fabrica Italiana Automobili Torino, which I can tell you, based on my Italian language skills and time living in Italy, translates to car factory in Italy, in Torino. That is the insight you only get on snacks.

That's the kind of stuff. The language skills, Jack and I build up for our snackers. I thought I was a car guy, and I did not know that. Now, this company owns everything from Maserati to dodge chargers, but we'll jump into that in a bit about how big Fiat Chrysler actually became. And then Pujo was founded in 1810. 18. That's before the horse.

It's a French company, and they claim to be the first to put solid rubber tires on a gas-powered car. Jack and I read that were like, the lawyers over at Pujo definitely made sure that was specifically worded. To be clear, they were not the first to make. a car, which, like, you might think that says. Or tires or put them on things. So, this merger, if confirmed, the companies haven't confirmed it yet, but the Wall Street Journal is, would fulfill the former CEO Sergio Marcioni's dream. His dream was to merge basically all the car companies in the world.

Sergio Marcioni is the godfather of modern car strategy, and he's done a few mergers over his years. Yeah, he really got into the scene in 2004 when he took over Fiat as CEO. At the time, Fiat, the mini cars were losing a million dollars a day. It was just Fiat back then. Yeah, it was simple. Then in 2009, he saw a buying opportunity. He got Fiat on its feet and then took over Chrysler, one of Detroit's Big Three automakers in 2009. Took them right out of bankruptcy.

Lovely visual here. A minivan can fit like 12 Fiat cars. It really can. And in 2015, he went one step further. Tried to merge Fiat Chrysler with General Motors. This was bold. Would have been one of the biggest mergers we'd ever seen, but GM kindly said no. He was so into it, though.

He was doing like public presentations on like, why this has got to happen. Sergio Marcioni passed away last year, sadly. But in his honor, his successor at Fiat Chrysler tried to merge with Renault earlier this year. Just had a thing for French car companies. And now finally, it looks like they might succeed with Pugéjo. But the interesting situation over at Fiat Chrysler is what are actually making the company money? Because it's got profit puppies that aren't Fiat cars.

Its profit puppies are huge. Literally. Ram trucks and Jeep SUVs. Dodge Ram and Jeep. Those are the profit. Who's driving the money into Fiat Chrysers. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in Italy, Amsterdam, and France now who are potentially going to merge? In the car industry, if you ain't merging, you're dying.

Preach. Sergio said it for years. The car industry needs to consolidate. Unless companies merge, Sergio would say these companies are going to go bankrupt in the next recession, and there's a key reason for that. There's great booms in the car industry, but there's huge busts in the car industry. Because when there's a recession, one thing you're not splurgeon on is like a $20,000 minivan for like three other people. People just stop buying cars during recessions. We haven't seen a recession for like 10 years in America, but it could be bad if we do.

In the meantime, by merging these car companies can limit their risk during a recession and optimize for the opportunities of being a single company, especially when it comes to innovation. So together, Fiat Chrysler and Pugéjo would control one-fourth of the European car market. And they can also invest in self-driving cars, electric cars, and a lot of other cool stuff. For our third and final story, we got our pre-unicorn of the date. Mirror the fitness company just snagged $34 million in fresh funding. We're about to talk about Mirror, but first, it's valuation. We don't know how much it's worth.

No, but it's probably less than unicorn status. It's probably waiting until it hits the billion-dollar valuation before announcing publicly. The PR team over at Mirrors like, oh, my God, they're on to us. Now, you're probably wondering, what do Lulu Lemon, Carly-Claughts the model, and the hedge fund that inspired the show billions have in common? They're all Mirror investors. Adam to the Venture list. Full disclosure, Nick and I both own stock and Lulu-Leon. That's very true.

Now, the company is raising $34 million because they want to expand their product into meditation, which is kind of strange. Well, the product is a mirror that doubles as a fitness instructor video thing. Pretty sure when you're meditating, you don't need like the eyes-on-eyes personal staring at someone instruction. Yeah, and looking at yourself in the mirror is kind of unzanned meditation-wise. Have your eyes closed. Jack and I do have our eyes closed during the podcast right now. So mirror has the same business model as Peloton.

Literally the same business model. Peloton, of course, has the best. bike and treadmill that they've stashed away. Right. It's not a copy cat situation. It's a copy dog situation because it's not exactly the same. The company used to be known as its name originally was curious or brutal name. Terrible name.

Mirror is a much more straightforward name because it's a full-length mirror that's interactive with a video screen behind it. It sounds so simple. You'll pick one up at Target. Nope. It's going to set you back $1,495 if you want to buy a mirror, interactive fitness mirror. And that mirror will have an instructor like behind. the mirror who walks you through a yoga routine, a bar routine.

Yeah, she's like in your house, but she's not in your house. There's no, like, awkward, like, yeah, I'll see you next week. In addition to that $1,500, though, you have to pay $39 a month for the streaming subscription, which is the same price as Pelot's. It's literally the exact same. Mirror, though, has one key differentiator from Peloton. Dual usage. Exactly, because the appeal of Mirror as a product is that it's really enhanced

furniture, kind of like a smart speaker. This thing looks good. It's like six feet tall. It makes your small living room look bigger because, you know, mirrors do that. And it's a mirror. So when you're not using it as a workout product, it sits in your home as a mirror. Now, you might be thinking to yourself, okay, a piece of furniture that streams video with an instructor so I could work out at home. Can't Peloton just do this?

The answer is yes. Yeah, probably can. In fact, we interviewed the co-founder of Peloton, who is the head of product, who's in charge of, like, coming up with its next thing. He didn't say they were going to make a mirror. But he didn't say they weren't going to make a mirror. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Mirror? Mirror could be a really good acquisition target. So here's the thing. Peloton, the company, it recently went public.

The stock's down 20%, but the company itself is worth $7 billion, and that's kind of expensive. That'd be expensive to acquire. Mirror, we don't know the exact valuation, but it's probably about one-tenth of that because they were valued at like $300 million earlier this year. So we were thinking about bigger companies that might want Mirror in the family. So Equinox could be a company because Equinox, the Jim chain, they happen to own like almost all of SoulCycle, which Aldo has a fitness product for your home page.

And they could also offer Mirror to all those people that have Equinox subscriptions and never show up. And SoulCycle hasn't done something that innovative in a while. This could be an interesting compliment. Peloton could be another acquirer of a mirror. Instead of developing your own similar product, just buy the company. Yeah, you'd have to spend all this money on competing, marketing, all that stuff, just buy Mirror.

And then Google, I really like this one. Jack got excited about this one. You should have seen the whiteboard over here was freaking out. It made an offer to acquire Fitbit recently, and Mirror basically is a smart device. It's like a voice assistant. Exactly, which means another potential acquire could be Apple, which would see this as an addition like a speaker in your home. The Apple Mirror.

Or would it be eye mirror? The eye mirror. Or would they go with eye reflection? They get kind of creative. Snackers, those are our ideas. We want to know what you think. Who could acquire mirror and be the perfect fit? Hit us up at Robin Hood Snacks on Twitter.

Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for us over there? Twitter just voluntarily cut off one of its own revenue streams, political ads. And it puts pressure on Zuck and the whole Facebook team. Fiat Chrysler is reportedly merging with Puget, creating the fourth biggest global car company. As a Ujur merged company, carmakers can better survive. Mirror just raised $34 million to expand into meditation. We're wondering who's going to acquire this company. We want to hear your thoughts.

Tweet us at Robin Hood Snacks. Now Snackers, time for a snack fact of the day. this one sent in from Jay Arrington in Texas, where I hear everything is size medium? Yes, that's Texas's slogan, I believe. It pretty much goes like that. So today's Halloween, by the way. Yeah. Device of candy, though, for Halloween?

Candy corn. Very divisive. I'm a big fan until I just saw the ingredients. This thing is wild. Turns out, this is Jay's snack fact. Candy corn is made by the same company that makes jelly beans. Right. And it was invented in 1880 by a company called Wonderly.

1880. But then jelly bean made their own version eight years later and has been pumping them out since 1898. Nine metric tons per year. That's how much. Actually, I don't think that's that much. It just sounds like a big number. It's only Halloween. But the main ingredients are sugar,

yep, corn syrup, and wax. Yes. Artificial coloring. Interesting. And artificial binders. Don't know what binders are. Three ring binders. Don't think you're supposed to have binders in your body.

Thanks for that info, Wikipedia. We appreciate that, Jay Arrington. Thanks for sending it in. Snackers, remember to claim your first. free stock today from Robin Hood by going to Snackspodcast.robinhood.com today. That's where you sign up. Support the show and get a free stock. Snackspodcast.robinhood.com. We'll catch you tomorrow.