The Rundown - GameStop Shareholder Meeting on Deck, McDonald's Quits AI Drive-Thru Test

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

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Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Monday, June 17. In today's episode, we recap last week's wild week and what to look forward to this week. Also, the GameStop shareholder meeting is happening today. We'll get you ready for that, and McDonald's is removing AI from its drive-thrus. Finally, stick around to the end of the show to find out why Inside Out 2 might have saved Disney, but also hurt Disney fans at the same time. All right, let's go.

Well, guys, last week was a great week to be an investor, especially investors in tech stocks. The S&P made record highs four out of the five days, overall gaining 1.6% and the NASDAQ straight crushed it up 3.5% last week. Tech stocks continued to dominate, especially the top three, Microsoft, Apple, and Nvidia, which are now each worth over $3 trillion in market cap. This is the first time that we've had three companies worth over $3 trillion at the same time. So, these three companies continue to make history. And because the S&P 500 is market cap weighted, meaning the larger your market cap, the more influence you have on the index, these three stocks, Microsoft, Apple, and Nvidia, now account

for over 20% of the S&P 500's value. Just three companies. S&P 500, very top-heavy right now. Overall, investors are feeling pretty good these days, especially about inflation. We got a couple of data points last week that showed that inflation is back to cooling down. This week is a short week for the stock market. The markets will be closed on Wednesday in observation of June 10th. But we're still going to get some economic data this week.

Retail sales data for May is coming out on Tuesday morning. So that'll be interesting to see how consumers are spending their money over the last month. And I'm sure some corporate drama is going to pop up. So we'll keep you guys in the loop. Make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast and tuning in this week. And if we run out of ideas, we'll just talk about GameStop. I feel like we haven't heard from Roaring Kitty in a few days. Let's run through some headlines.

And speaking of Roaring Kitty, let's start with GameStop. GameStop's annual shareholder meeting is taking place today. at 12.30 p.m. Eastern. Now, the reason this is news is because the meeting was originally supposed to take place last week, but was delayed due to a surge in online demand to stream the meeting, which kind of crashed the platform. So now it's being rescheduled for today, and let's see if the servers hold up this time. Now, I wonder if Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, is going to have something to say about the shareholder meeting today. I mean, he's now the fourth largest GameStop shareholder owning over 9 million shares. He used to own 5 million, but then he sold all of his

call options in the company and use that money to buy more stock. Roaring Kitty still seems to be pretty bullish on the company. He's praised the current management like CEO Ryan Cohen on his reason for his investment and he thinks the management will guide the company to a good future. So we'll see. So I'm actually kind of curious to see how the GameStop shareholder meeting is going to go. What are they going to say in the meeting? Are they going to talk about Roaring Kitty? I'll probably tune in and I'll let you guys know if anything interesting happens in tomorrow's episode. By the way, last year's meeting was less than 15 minutes. I got a feeling it's not going to be that short this time. Switching gears a bit.

talk about McDonald's. McDonald's is ending its AI drive-through tests that they had been doing with IBM, which is a side of relief because AI not ready to take over the world yet. I had no idea that McDonald's was even testing this. But apparently back in 2021, McDonald's partnered with IBM to install AI chat box in hundreds of McDonald's drive-through locations to see if it gets speed up operations. Well, it didn't seem to work that well, and now McDonald's is going to remove all this AI stuff from all their locations by July 26th.

But that doesn't mean that McDonald's is completely moving away from AI. They actually recently announced a deal with Google back in December to use generative AI in 2024. So they could potentially use Google's tech, which is probably better than IBMs, for their drive-thrus instead. Fast food companies are really trying to make AI a thing. Obviously, McDonald's is trying it. Wendy's has been trying it with their drive-thrus, and White Castle is testing one provided by Soundhound. But I just don't think it's been a big hit so far. Let's talk real quick about another breakthrough in technology, battery technology.

Apple products may be getting a battery upgrade pretty. soon. A Japanese battery manufacturer said it made a breakthrough with its new batteries that could be more powerful than the lithium ones that are currently used. The new battery is called solid state battery and it can store more energy and hold a longer charge than lithium ones. The Japanese company TDK supplies batteries for Apple and said the battery can be used in wearable devices such as earphones and watches. I mean having a week-long battery life for the Apple Watch would be awesome. So hopefully we get a battery upgrade, especially for the AirPods, because I feel like mine die quickly all the time. All right, let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Starting with

Best Buy. Shares of the electronic retailer are up after the bank UBS upgraded the company to a buy. The upgrade comes as Best Buy expands into new product offerings such as AI technology. Of course, they're also offering e-bikes and more. Best Buy has also been going through a restructuring plan and cutting employee headcount. They're down to 77,000 employees as of 2023, which is down from over 100,000 employees that they had a few years ago. That's a pretty significant. reduction there. UBS is a price target of $106 per share for Best Buy stock. Shares of Best Buy are up over 3% in the pre-market. Now on the flip side of stock not doing so good this morning is Adidas. Adidas, I always struggles to think Adidas. I always want to do the European pronunciation,

Adidas. Shares of Adidas are falling after the company said it's investigating bribery allegations in China. Adidas is a second largest sportswear maker after Nike and received an anonymous letter accusing high-ranking executives in China of accepting millions of euros worth of kickbacks. The whistleblower tip is reportedly authored by a longtime Adidas employee in China, where the company has really struggled after a steep drop in market share during the pandemic. You can check out Adidas shares on the public app under ticker symbol ADDYY. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Disney Pixar's Inside Out 2 made $155 million at the U.S. box office over the weekend, which is the second highest for an animated movie ever.

And it's actually the first movie to make over $100 million in a weekend since Barbie of last year. Kind of wild, but also goes to show you that how bad the box office has been over the last year. Now, Disney's expectation for the movie was around $100 million, so it significantly outperformed expectations. And if you count the international box office, Inside Out 2 made $295 million, which is an opening weekend record for an animated movie. So that sound that you hear is CEO Bob Iger taking a huge sigh of relief because this is a huge win for Disney, and they really needed this. Disney's Pixar hasn't had a hit in a long time. We actually talk about this on 4. Friday's episode. So if you want to learn more about that, go check it out. Now, the only downside to this,

we might get more sequels, prequels, and spinoffs instead of original ideas from Disney, since they tend to make more money. But I'm sure that Disney shareholders don't mind. Now, while this was a good weekend for Disney, the overall box office has continued to struggle this year. Movie ticket sales are down 26% compared to last year. Now, I'm sure some of this is related to the actors and writer strike that we had last year. There really hasn't been many great movies this year. But I also think some of this is just, I'd rather just wait until the movie comes out on streaming so I can watch it for my home on my 70-inch TV with the comfort of my own bed and not pay ridiculous prices for tickets or popcorn. I don't know. Just a thought. Well, all right, guys, that's the

rundown for today. I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple and Spotify. I know it sounds silly, but that five-star rating really does help us out. And while you're at it, don't forget to tap the notification bell on Spotify, so you'll be notified as soon as an episode goes live every morning. Thank you guys so much for listening. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes. And we'll see you. you guys back here tomorrow. This is the rundown, your real-time resource for news events and trends in the markets. All views presented in the show reflect the opinions of the guests.

You should not take any mention of a publicly traded security as recommendation to buy, sell or hold that security. Rounddown guests are not financial advisors and are not affiliated with public holdings or its subsidiaries. You should make your own financial and investment decisions or consult. Respective professionals. Learn more at public.com disclosures. In partnership with Zayidmani, brokerage services for U.S. listed, registered securities

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