The Best One Yet - 🏚️ “What’s the refund policy on Airbnb’s IPO promise?” — Movie theaters get cut out. Airbnb’s host/guest hate. 5 “Corona-conomy” trends are accelerating.

Episode Date: March 23, 2020

We predict that the Corona-conomy is accelerating trends, including contactless payments, subscriptions, and cord-cutting. Universal Studios is going direct-to-consumer with its latest movies, which questions the whole must-be-in-theaters-first-for-90-days thing. And Airbnb promised investors and employees it would IPO this year, but now it’s got to make a careful calculation as its bookings plummet: Side with guests or hosts?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 Monday, March 23rd. Snackers, last week was horrible. Stocks had their worst week since 2008. Jack and I whipped up the old medical degrees, which we don't have, and we found one prescription for this situation.

The best one yet from Snacks Daily right now. Today's pot is like so much better than Friday's pod. Jack, what's the first story? First story, Airbnb did a funny thing last fall. It promised the whole world publicly that it would IPO this year. the corona economy started and kind of changed all those plans. Now it has unhappy guests, unhappy hosts, and unhappy employees. What's the refund policy on an Airbnb IPO promised, Jack? What can we get for that thing? Second story. Universal Studios is doing what Casper mattresses,

quip toothbrushes, and all bird shoes is doing. It's going direct to consumer with movies. The corona economy has shut down movie theaters, physical ones, so movie studios are cutting those theaters out altogether. Really good for affordable popcorn? Not so good if you're AMC. theaters. Our third and final story, the corona economy, which by the way means the coronavirus economy. Oh, and by the way, we've said literally four times on this podcast already, trying to make it happen. The corona economy has taken a bunch of existing business trends and accelerated it. COVID-19 is a performance-enhancing drug for disrupting companies. We predict five trends that are accelerating in business thanks to coronavirus.

And we're going to go over how you can't confirm if they become trends. Now, before we jump into all that, we hope all of our snackers are feeling comfortable. while you're snacking at home. But while Nick and I, us non-essential workers, are working from home, there's also essential workers who aren't working from home. Jack and I aren't in the studio right now. We are extremely non-essential, and we are extremely potting remotely via FaceTime and remote podcast equipment.

No, Nick and I created a list of people. We just want to kind of acknowledge here because they are working in the wild, like risking their lives in some cases, started off with medical workers who are on the front lines of this thing. Then you got delivery people like UPS to DoorDash. Then you got the bank tellers because banks are absolutely essential. Like money is important right now and they're talking to people. Although please don't pay in cash.

Then you got the grocery baggers, even though you could probably do your own grocery bagging right now to give them a break. Let's not forget the farmers. I mean, there may not be any human beings close to them, but they're working hard to feed the world right now during this crisis. Jack, how about the people making the hospital supplies, which is the official technical term for them? No, seriously. I bet you there's factories where people have to go in and work because hospitals need like masks and ventilators and stuff. Then you got the cooks because there are so many so many times that you can like attempt to do a souffle. I'm on number six right. And then you got the janitors with

those enormous brooms and massive mops because after the cooks are done cooking, someone's got to clean the kitchen. And then you've got the people who are just hanging out with elderly people because Jack and I were not allowed to apparently hang out with elderly people right now. No, but if you know an elderly person near you, you might want to knock on the door and just ask if they need like something picked up from the grocery store. Give them a call, knock on the window. They are all out there so that we don't have to be. And some are not working from home because they can be missing out on critical pay. Yeah, it's kind of a privilege to be able to work from home.

Not everybody can do it. So some are like out there not doing the healthy thing because they need a paycheck. It's a brutal decision. Whether you're working from home or not working from home, we're hoping we can all endure this pain now so we can kill the virus now. We're also hoping Congress sends like $1,000 checks to all of us staff. And when they do, we'll be covering it here on snacks daily. So let's hit our three stories. tuned into 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.

Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member FINRA slash SIPC. For our first story, Airbnb is stuck in the middle of a fight between guests and hosts. And it sided with the guests. Snackers, by the way, Jack and I were supposed to be making our way back from a lovely trip to Tahoe this weekend. That didn't end up happening. We got matching ski onesies.

Beautiful. It was going to be wonderful. We were going to document the whole thing on Instagram. Nick was going to wipe out because of the death cookies. I was going to be skiing the fresh pow. If you do the French fries and then the pizza and back to the French fries, it looks more professional. Now, we canceled because of the global health pandemic and the host, I got to say, the host of the place we booked generously refunded the deal even though we were outside the cancellation window. But this little conundrum that Jack and I face this weekend is actually both a financial and existential question that Airbnb is facing right now across every property.

Should guests have to pay for coronavirus canceled Airbnb booking? So let's look at the number, Snackers. Back in Q1, 2019, basically the same time last year, Airbnb had a cool 30 million bookings per a month going down. That means there's basically 30 million bookings or more per month getting canceled right now because of the coronavirus economic shutdown. Which leads to the question for Airbnb, do the hosts get paid? Because you agreed to the cancellation policy, so you got to pay. Or do the guests get refunded?

In which case, the host don't get any money for their place, which was empty all weekend. So the Airbnb elders got together, brought their swords, brought their magic, and decided to make a group decision upon what we can imagine was a very nice hill. I declare the guests shall be refunded. Jerry, in accounting, refund the guests. If you look at Airbnb.com right now, the very first thing you're going to see is we are now offering guests full refunds and hosts no charge cancellations. So the guests can cancel their Airbnb or the host can cancel Airbnb. Nobody pays. So Snackers, here's what Jack and I found fascinating about this. Airbnb is technically a tech company, but it's just as much a travel company as Delta or U.S. Airways. The Wall Street Journal reported

on Friday that this crisis is costing enormous losses for Airbnb. Snackers get these numbers. Bookings for Airbnb last week plummeted 95% in Asia. They fell 75% in Europe. And then they dropped 50% in the USA, which is Airbnb's home turf market. And now Airbnb's hosts are angry that Airbnb overruled the existing cancellation policies that guests agreed to. Yeah, the hosts from Mary to Marie, they were like banking on income from their properties over like ski locations, South by Southwest, Coachella, you name it. And now all those events and all those weekends are canceled and those hosts got no money. By the way, if you're a snacker who is going to do a ski weekend, South by Southwest, and Coachella,

please tweet at us because Jack and I want to be friends with you. Nick, are you thinking what I'm thinking? That kind of sounds like our buddy Timmy. It sounds exactly like Timmy. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Airbnb? Airbnb has major, major IPO problems right now. Snackers, Airbnb was last worth $31 billion, making it one of the most valuable companies that had not IPOed yet. I actually don't know how many lifts that is anymore. I think it's like seven lifts. I think two weeks ago was like two lifts and now it's like eight lifts.

Right. And early employees of Airbnb didn't get paid that much cash money in their salary. Instead, they took a lot of stock of Airbnb and options of Airbnb. And early investors that have patiently waited a decade for this IPO, they've been sitting there with a bunch of stock waiting for an IPO. Right. So the IPO is very important. But for tax reasons, the Airbnb stock options that we mentioned, they had to have an expiration date.

And that expiration date is this year, 2020. So to make sure that employees didn't revolt after all this time waiting for an IPO, last fall, Airbnb publicly announced that it was going to IPA. IPO this year in 2020. Now Snackers, we got to say, it is highly unusual to make an announcement that you're going to IPO next year and to make that announcement publicly. We had never seen this kind of thing before. It's like a guy posting on Instagram that he's going to propose to his girlfriend next year. Like, you just wait until you do it. Then you make the post. He's got like the picture up. It's got the garden right there. What are you doing, Jerry? What are you doing? Now, with hosts

revolting because of coronavirus and a global pandemic keeping guests away, investors may have less interest in buying Airbnb stock in an IPO. And that means Airbnb faces another terrible choice. Have a bad IPO this year in 2020? Or delay the IPO again and really upset all your employees who may quit? For our second story, movie theaters are shutting down and they may never come back after Universal's latest moves that we just saw. Nick, trivia question, what was the name of the Mariah Carey movie. Oh, okay. I'm going to go with either Butterfly or the All I Want for Christmas, the prequel. No, but good guesses. The movie was actually called Glitter, and you don't know that because it debuted on September 21st, 2001. Like a week after 9-11, it was an epic, epic failure. No one

wanted to go to theaters and watch Mariah Carey. Basically going forward, movie theaters don't want to become the next Mariah Carey. Snackers, the CDC says, avoid gatherings more than 10 people. That means don't go to movies or touch any human-sized popcorn bins that you can get lost in. So instead of Mariah Carey-style movie theater humiliation, Universal Studios is letting its new releases get rented on things like iTunes or Roku for 20 bucks right now. Yeah, we're lucky. I mean, we're talking instant classics are suddenly streaming like Trolls World Tour. The Hunt? Or The Invisible Men? How about Emma, which is actually a Jane Austen Classic Comedy? I'm looking forward to that one. Meanwhile, MGM is the

laying it's James Bond flick until like November. And then Disney, uh, out of nowhere, they added Frozen 2 to Disney Plus. So if you're paying seven bucks a month, you can watch Frozen 2, which by the way, was a terrible sequel. I watched it and I quit halfway through. But we're bullish on Elsa's career. She's got a lot of potential. With all this turmoil in the movie theater industry, we're wondering if they're going to bring back the movie phone guy. Hello. And why don't you just tell me the name of the movie you'd like to see? Now, the movie industry has something called the 90-day theatrical window. This thing is highly technical sounding. It's basically the reason you're stuck splurging like 150 bucks for our family of 4 to see Star Wars and 30 trailers. Snackers, we all know this. Movies are

in theaters only for a period of 90 days after release. Only after 90 days did they finally arrive on VHS DVD, Blu-ray, iTunes, TV, Netflix, and Blue DVD. Nick and I did some research on this. It seems like it's just like an etiquette thing. Like all the movie studios agree they're not going to put movies on DVDs or iTunes until 90 days. Basically like no white after Labor Day. No actual rule here, but like people just seem to do this. It's just the way it is and the movie theaters would judge each other if anyone broke tradition. Meanwhile, you've got new school disruption happening that's kind of changing the old 90-day theatrical window rule. Netflix and Amazon are completely ignoring the 90-day window. They're basically flouting white jeans at a Christmas party. Spielberg hates it. He's so not into this.

Now, the news from this past week, the old school movie studios like Universal, they're essentially ignoring the 90-day window as well because of the coronavirus shutdown. They're releasing these movies straight to stream. And once things return to normal, it's not clear that they may even go back to this 90-day rule. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over in the movie industry? One thing we shouldn't forget, movies aren't being produced right now. Snackers, that's the other reason why movie theater stocks are getting extra crushed right now. theaters is a publicly traded stock. So is Cynemark. They have like together probably like 10,000 movie theaters. Their stocks are down about 70% each just in the last month and a half. And guess,

by the way, who else is working from home these days? Yeah. Actors are working from home. Stunt doubles working from home. Grips? You know the grips, Nick. Those are important for movie production. They're chilling and making mashup John Lennon karaoke videos. So movie theaters are going to have no movies to play during the public health crisis. And then when the crisis is over, Theaters, we'll have to wait for new movies to actually come in. For our third and final story, we're predicting coronavirus is accelerating some very specific trends. But we can't confirm whether we're right or not until April. Now, Snackers, there were already like a bunch of reasons out why you'd probably try out

some disrupting company's new product or thing or service. You might try out some new thing to save money. Okay. To save time. Totally fair. Because it's a superior product. Very justifiable. Or because it's got a superior design.

All good reasons to move from some old school incumbent to like, a fancy new disruptor. Now there is one new reason in the corona economy to use a disrupting product, and that is to avoid germs. Avoiding germs is a new driver of product adoption. So to kick it off, Jack and I whipped up a few trends that we've noticed are getting accelerated in the coronavirus. First one, Jack, contactless payments. Like PayPal, Square, Apple Pay, Google Pay, I think a bunch of other tech companies have pay solutions. You throw the word pay in the back and it basically works. You don't need cash. You don't even need a plastic credit card. No, you just hover your phone close to some sensor and then you wait for a very satisfying vibration to indicate that the payment has gone through.

And that's how you avoid germs. The second trend we noticed getting accelerated, electric cars. Like Tesla or new electric options from Audi, GM, or a bunch of other car companies. You got one of these puppies. You don't even need to touch a contaminated gas pump. Everybody is touching the contaminated gas pump. You don't want to be anywhere near that. You plug this in at home, boom, you're done like a glad plug-in. Avoid germs. Third trend we noticed getting accelerated

in the corona economy, seatless restaurants. We actually kind of called this in our last podcast of 2019 in which we made a wish list of three things that should happen in 2020. We definitely didn't predict coronavirus,

but we did say this kind of thing would happen for a different reason. Starbucks, Yum, and Chipotle, they've all converted a lot of their locations to be for takeout and delivery only. Duncan has literally gotten rid of entire seats and entire locations. Bostonians pretty much ignored the please don't sit down, so they had to actually remove the sate.

And now that's helping people avoid germs. The fourth trend we've noticed getting accelerated, cord cutting. There's plenty of media consumption going on right now while we're all pretending to be working from home. But the big surprise has been the fact that there are no live sports. No, every major sports league has been canceled, and live sports was one of the last things keeping millions of people paying for expensive cable. And the final trend getting accelerated right now is subscriptifying everything. We're talking set in order, forget that you set it, and then get monthly refills delivered to your door. You're probably like at home with Fido right now, who's a Labradoodle sheepdog mix, adorable. And if you want to make sure you never forget to get Fido dog food, and you never have to go to a store where there's lots of other people with potential germs,

go to something like Chewy.com and set a monthly dog food delivery. You never think about it again, and then boom, every month you get those awkwardly shaped rubber toys coming in. your door. You can pretty much do the same thing with every toiletry in your toiletry cabinet. Every type of clothing in your wardrobe. So true. Every type of food in your pantry, human or an animal. The new benefit driving these trends is not encountering germs. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies who are like all these trends? In next quarter's earnings, we'll see if our prediction was right or not. Snackers, right now, we think these trends are going to accelerate in this particular corona economy. In other words, we think more people will start taking on these disruptive products.

It's based on like our instincts, our experience, like the evidence out there, and Jack and I spending a lot of time talking to each other in a whiteboard. We spend a lot of time talking to each other Jack's really into the RN right now instead of saying right now. He just says RN. RN is my favorite abbreviate. It's a great word. But in April, companies are going to report publicly how they did in the first quarter, aka how they did from January through March. So we'll get our first glimpse of how business has changed during the Corona economy. What you're hearing in this pod, this is our Snacks prediction. We'll confirm whether the prediction was right or not in April. Jack, and you'll whip up the takeaways for us over there and maybe shave. Airbnb had to decide

who's going to lose money for all these cancellations related to coronavirus. Hosts lose, guests get refunds, and now it's got IPO problems. Our second story, movie theaters are taking a big hit in the corona economy, and some movie studios are going directly to consumer. They're basically wearing white past Labor Day. It's weird, but it's kind of cool. Spielberg hates it. Third and final story. Coronavirus is accelerating trends like contactless payments, subscription deliveries, electric cars, and cord cutting. It's our prediction, but we'll confirm it in April's earnings. Now, time for our snack fact today. This one sent in by a very notable combo in East Brunswick, New Jersey. Jack, who we got. We got Aidan and Ava Hickey, who listened with their dad, Andrew Hickey, their epic snackers. And this is the first, I think, brother and sister snack fact we've ever received. siblings who snack together are awesome siblings together. I'm pretty sure that's been said before.

On February 15th, a pair of astronomers discovered a miniature moon is orbiting planet Earth, and we didn't even know it was there until now. No, we've got that main moon that we pretty much see every day. But then if you look really close, you will not be able to see, because it's invisible to the naked eye, a second moon orbiting Earth. This thing is about the size of a car. And unfortunately, those astronomers named it something kind of lame. It's called 2020 CD3, aka mini moon. A.k.a. Second Moon. We need a better name. Why don't they split in half? Call 1-8 and call A-A-Ava. If you haven't killed the person you're living with yet, why don't you tell them to listen to snacks daily so we can boost our listenership? They can join us tomorrow. We're going to try to make that one better than today's. H-Y-H-Y-S-D. T-B-O-Y, the best one yet.

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 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.