The Best One Yet - “UNO...the card game…the movie” — Mattel’s 25 schmoovies. Twitter’s DIY blitz. GM’s $2B mistake.

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Barbie just enjoyed her best sales quarter in 6 years… Now Mattel is going full Disney with a whole new strategy. Twitter announced earnings, but we’re focused on the 5 acquisitions it’s made in 60 days. And General Motors’ stock fell 5% after admitting it’s not a computer — and admitting a $2B mistake.$MAT $TWTR $GMGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @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, February 11th. Nick, I'm a fan of Athesiawear, but third trimester for my wife. It's 10 degrees outside. Understandable. We're kind of rocking the leisure wear lifestyle.

Jack, I remember when we predicted net leisure wear, the sweatpants that pair with Grey's Anatomy? We're actually on our 10th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe this weekend. I know exactly what you're doing, Jack. You're trying to distract us from your cavity. Cotton is back, baby. Oh, yeah. Snackers, where's the support of my cavity, by the way? This is our best pod yet, although not sure about that based on our rambling right now.

First story, I think this is a T-boy. Mattel's Barbie doll just enjoyed her best year of sales since 2014. The bigger story, 25 schmoovies Mattel's whipping up for us. For our second story, Twitter stock jumped 13% after its earnings report to a new record high. Jack and I found something more interesting. This company's made five acquisitions in just 60 days. For our third and final story, General Motors stock fell yesterday because it didn't admitted it's not a computer. Yeah, a wild issue here. They made a mistake that could cost them

$2 billion. But Snackers. Yesterday at 206 p.m. Eastern Time, right before we're going to record this pod, we heard this. Yeah, our phones buzzed, and then we got this notification from the New York Times. According to two people familiar with the matter, Facebook is said to be building a product to compete with Clubhouse. Jack, I got a translation here for you. PFWTMs say Facebook is zucking. Clubhouse. Snackers, remember that pre-zucking we told you about on Monday where Mark Zuckerberg jumped into Clubhouse and asked everyone how likely they are to recommend this clubhouse thing to a friend on a scale of 1 to 10? Well, that was a pre-zucking. And now we are mid-zucking. This is Officer Nick Jack. I've got a stage 5 zucking in progress. Stage five zucking in progress. Now Snackers, technically,

Facebook hasn't announced this zucking product yet. We're relying on the New York Times as PFWTMs. But never forget this, if a zucking happens in a forest and no one's there to hear it, it's still a zuck. We have nothing more to say on this matter. Actually, we have one more thing to say. A quick moment of silence to all the products, features, and apps to have been zucked. Let's hear 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 ear 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, Barbie just had her best year since 2016, Jack. But Mattel's latest profit puppy is the Schmovie. Shmovie. Jack, we should define Schmovies again over here. Shows, movies, everything in between, right? Yes. The Undel's. doing on HBO? Classic schmovie. In the meantime, though, Barbie just saw sales jump 19% to a five-year high for Mattel Jack. Hot Wheels just searched 13% for this company. Do you want to tell the Snackers about your Hot Wheels collection? Can we please? It's in my childhood bedroom. It's basically... What do you got? Like 200? It's about 200, 250 Hot Wheels Jack. In the box or opened up? None of them are opened. At the age of 11, Nick was thinking about asset

appreciation. Long term. It's all about the long term, Jack. It's all about these dots. Snackers, funny thing about Mattel earnings, dolls had doubled the sales growth as action figures did. Felicity, the American Girl doll, just crushing Puzz Light Year these days. And get this, our fellow snacker, Rebecca, would love this. The Baby Yoda was the number one plush toy in the U.S. in the last three months. Number one plush toy. You can't physically take the kids to Chuckie cheeses or on vacation. So Jack, what are you going to do? You're turning the playroom into an escape with bunch of dolls and action figures. That's what's driving the sales growth at Mattel. Now, that was all fun and really interesting. But the real magic was what Jack and I found

hidden on slide number 15, subtly under the mid-to-long-term strategy numbers. Mattel has 25 plus TV shows and movies that are in production or already announced. 25 TV shows. We're not talking like just Barbie and Hot Wheels franchises getting some kind of a Hollywood deal because they're Hollywood franchise. Although Barbie and Hot Wheels are getting like big-time Hollywood deals. Get this. Uno, like the card game Uno with the wild cards, Uno is getting a live action film that's in development with Grammy-nominated rapper Lil Yadi. Magic 8 ball, a C-list toy over at Mattel, they're getting a show. Ask again, it is certain, don't count on it, that magic eight ball.

Wackamol, the old school board game where you hit a mammal with a tiny little mallet. Jack, they're getting a game show. American Girl, Wishbone, Thomas, and Friends. They're getting shows on Netflix, Cartoon Network, and HBO Max. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Mattel? The Disney strategy. Turn one character into five revenue streams. Okay, Snackers, Mattel's sales, they grew 10% last quarter.

Their rival Hasbro sales are only up like 4%. The reason Mattel's outperforming, it recognized it needs to Disney-fi its characters. And Walt Disney was the master of turning intellectual property, like the Lion King, into a movie, into a show, into a theme park, into a lunchbox, into a lunch park. Last week, we told you Nintendo is doing the same thing with Super Mario World, the new theme park at Universal Studios. Well, Jack and I are looking at Mattel, and they're basically maximizing the same strategy with streaming video and cable TV.

Mattel is flexing each character into a bunch of different revenue streams. And Jack Walt, Walt would be proud. Actually, he'd be angry that he didn't protect the strategy as intellectual property. You're so right. For our second story, post-Trump, Twitter just announced, get this, its best earnings ever, ever. Twitter's stock is at its record high as it transforms into something much more than tweets. Okay, before we do the story, Jack, I feel like we just got to get this out of the way, like clear the air. Twitter also just Zuck Clubhouse. We should just say that. Right. What's the new feature called?

Yeah, it doesn't even matter. Does it matter, Jack? I don't know, but there's an epidemic of zucking that Mark Zuckerberg kicked off in the industry. Yeah, there is. Now, there is Twitter before 2020. And the way Jack and I see it, then there's Twitter after 2020, two different companies. All right. Twitter just announced their fourth quarter earnings, which was the last three months of 2020. Jack, Twitter's revenue, what do we got? They jumped 28% compared to the year before. Jack, daily users at Twitter, what do we got? Up 27% to 192 million. Jack, how about Twitter's profits nearly doubled to over $200 million? That is wild. Now, Snackers, we've said this before. Stock prices are based on the future, not on the past.

So you may be wondering if Twitter's decision to permanently ban Donald Trump's Twitter account could hurt the usage of Twitter because he drives so much activity and so many tweets and so many retweets. Well, Twitter just shared the info and apparently usage was up 20% in January since they banned Donald Trump. Hence, Twitter stock jumping to a record high. And then CEO Jack Dorsey laid this quote on us to try to seal things up. We aren't dependent on news and politics being what drives Twitter. I know what you're thinking, Jack. Do you want me to share it?

I'm not thrilled about the grammar of that sentence, but I am thrilled about the business prospects. That's what happened with Twitter's numbers. But here's what Jack and I found fascinating. They didn't talk about this, but Twitter has made five acquisitions in just the last 60 days. Check out Wikipedia. You can confirm it yourself.

More deals in the past two months than in the prior two years combined. For example, just two weeks ago, Twitter acquired review. Review is subscription newsletters. It's a lot like substack. Yeah, like imagine Twitter. users publishing their own paid newsletters available with one click via Twitter. Sign up for my newsletter. It's $5 a month. We cover slamming salmon sweater trends in the Pacific Northwest. A niche newsletter, for example. It's a niche newsletter. There's no

in the market for it. So that was two weeks ago. Four weeks ago, Twitter went up and acquired Breaker, a podcast startup. The Social Podcasting Company, it allows audio and interaction. Yeah, imagine a podcast player with live text conversation among listeners. Engage with Nick and Jack Live on the future of slam and salmon cardigans. Maybe it becomes a little less niche, Jack. Now, Twitter has always been a 240 character quippy sentence company. That's what it's been before 2020. But with these latest acquisitions, it's also now a DIY media company. So Jack, what's the takeaway for the other Jack and our buddies over Twitter? Twitter is granting creators number one wish. Destroying friction.

Okay, Snackers. Just got to let you into something here. Something Jack and I talk about all the time, weekends before this pod after this pod. The main thing we're thinking about, we want to have a conversation with you after our podcast airs, after every episode. We have been this close to asking you at the end of our podcast to jump onto the Clubhouse app to talk about the three stories that we just did in our podcast. Yeah, by the way, Tony Nash, legendary snacker, thanks for the invite. But to talk to you all, we'd have to ask you to first download this new app Clubhouse. And most of you, you're busy, you probably won't download Clubhouse. On the other hand, we already talked to thousands and thousands of Snackers every day on Twitter. Many people are already there. It's an existing social media app.

At Nick of New York, at Jack Kramer, at Robin Hood Snacks. Now, the pod, the newsletter, the video features that Twitter is recently acquired, those concepts already exist elsewhere on other apps, other platforms. Here's where it gets interesting. Unlike those other apps, though, Nick, Twitter already has 192 million people who open up the app every day. So now, other hoping creators will launch all their stuff just on Twitter and not have to deal with any platform friction. Friction is the worst. It stinks when Nick and I have to say, follow us on Spotify, watch our videos on YouTube, chat with us after the pot on Club has, read our newsletter on substack. Instead, Twitter's hoping it becomes, listen, watch chat,

read on Twitter. One click, no friction. For our third and final story, General Motorsstock has been enjoying record highs thanks to all this electric vehicle hype. But now they're planning to lose $2 billion because of one huge mistake. Yeah, not a good plan, Jack. Now, GM stock had an all-time high this month really thanks to like a bunch of bold futuristic moves.

It culminated with a Will Ferrell Super Bowl commercial. That was really funny. I guess GM's new strategy destroy Norway. It's an interesting move. Now, despite the like new electric logo and the fancy electric battery and like the 2035 goal to end gas cars. Yeah.

Nick, let's be honest, the gas guzzlers still pay the bills at G. SUVs finance the whole future for car companies these days. And because of a shortage of one crucial part, one part. GM expects a third of its profits this year to disappear. Yeah, wild thing here, General Motors made a huge mistake this spring, and it's going to cost them $2 billion in profits. On March 11th, President Trump declared a national, pandemic emergency. Stocks tanked as investors clung to their closest bottle of pure out.

So General Motors looks at the situation, assumes people aren't going to splurge $51,799 MSRP on a suburban car at a time like this. No one knows what MSRP is, but GM decided to cancel bulk orders for chips thinking business was going to be slow in 2020. Yeah, and you need these chips to power the mediocre home screen that GM puts in every dashboard. You actually need like 50 to 100 chips to power a modern car. It's a good trivia question. Now, General Motors, turns out they were wrong. People did buy cars in 2020. Fourth quarter sales actually exceeded the previous year's fourth quarter. That's why GM had to announce the unfortunate news that lack of chips is forcing it to halt production at a handful of car factories. And those idle factories are going to cause GM one half to two billion dollars

denting this year's profits. Now, the mistake GM made in the spring, was understandable. Its stock had just fallen 50% in one month. Things were scary. Cash was tight, so it baddened down the chassis. But on the other hand, look at Tesla, which is doing something else. They're developing their own chips right now. Jack feels like a good transition. What's the takeaway for our buddies over General Motors? Does a hundred years of car making experience matter anymore? Yeah, Ford and GM both having a hundred year head start on our buddies over at Tesla. Ford and GM know every car parts supplier from Traverse City to Chattanooga.

Yeah, and as cars have become more electric, more autonomous, those relationships and experience seem to matter less and less. Ford and General Motors both expect these chip shortages to cause a billion dollars or more in profit pain this year. In the meantime, Tesla mentioned that whole chip shortage once in an earnings call, saying it's only going to have a temporary impact. Maybe that's because Tesla is starting to make its own chips, just like they make their own batteries.

every company has to be a tech company these days, Tesla being based in Silicon Valley is an advantage. General Motors 100 years of experience isn't. Jack, can you and your cavity whip up a takeaways for us over there? I'm sorry, is that sensitive? Mattel's sales are outperforming Hasbrows right now. Yeah, Mattel's doing the Disney. Turn one toy into five revenue streams. Twitter has transformed with its last five acquisitions. Yeah, now it's basically a different company. A company destroying friction. General Motors has a hundred years of car making experience. It doesn't have the Silicon Valley connections to navigate a chip shortage.

Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one sent in by Mila Turner over in Atlanta. We'll hand it over to you, Mila. Aze Taylor was born on February 1st in 1936 in Dale, Texas, and is the only African American ever to be treasurer of the United States. She was appointed by President Jimmy Carter on September 12th, 1977, after many years of public service. She served as the United States's 36th treasurer until January 20th 1981. And here's a fun fact. Her signature is on the U.S. currency for those years.

So Jack and I jumped in snack style to Azee Taylor Morton. A wild thing we also found, Jack. She attended the Texas Blind, Deaf, and Orphan School during her high school years because there was no high school for African Americans in Dale, Texas at the time. Okay, if you thought she was resilient before, that is true resilience. To clarify, she is neither blind nor deaf. By the way, if you've got a dollar bill from 1977 to 1981, send us a pick. Her signature's on it. I want to see that signature.

Snackers, before we go, we also have a quick correction. When we described the newest blue pigment in the last 200 years, we mentioned the wrong Oregon where it was developed. Oregon State University is the lab where these pigments were mashed together, not University of Oregon. Yeah. Go Beavers. Thursday is the new Friday. Happy pre-weekend. Make it a T-Boy, we'll see you tomorrow.

And before we go, happy birthday to Josh Bird, a dentist in San Francisco, who recommends brushing and flossing after snacking. Smart move. Happy birthday to Melissa Wongzo from Surabaya, Indonesia. And happy birthday Phil Donahue

turning 11 in Floyd's Knob, Indiana. And Grace and Shrome in Denver, Colorado. And Danilo Mejia in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. And Colin Grinn in the District of Columbia. And Stephanie Ford in Milford, Connecticut. and Ethan Carr in Oklahoma City and Cassidy Schwartz in Munster, Indiana. Happy birthday, Justin in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

And Maricela in Lake Elsinore, California. Congratulations to Taylor and Lauren Polk for having their first baby in Kyle, Texas. And Matt Ogren and Mary Kate Cunningham having their anniversary in Washington, B.C. Happy second honeymoon after 33 years married together to Chris and Sue Lemke in the great state of Michigan. This is Jack. I own stock of Netflix,

and Nick and I both on stock of Spotify. 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.