The Rundown - Snap Shares Implode, New Sports Streaming Service Launches

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Stock market news for February 7, 2024. The content of the podcast is for general and informational purposes only. All views presented in this show reflect the opinions of the guest and the host. You should not take a mention of any asset, be it cryptocurrency or a publicly traded security as a recommendation to buy, sell or hold that cryptocurrency or security. Guests and hosts are not affiliated with or endorsed by Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. You should make your own financial and investment decisions or consult respective professionals. Full disclosures are in the channel description. Learn more at Public.com/disclosures. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. There is a possibility of loss with any investment. Historical or hypothetical performance results, if mentioned, are presented for illustrative purposes only. Do not infer or assume that any securities, sectors or markets described in the videos were or will be profitable. Any statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements are strictly based on the current views, opinion, or assumptions of the person presenting them, and should not be taken as an indicator of performance nor should be relied upon as an investment advice.The content of the podcast is for general and informational purposes only. All views presented in this show reflect the opinions of the guest and the host. You should not take a mention of any asset, be it cryptocurrency or a publicly traded security as a recommendation to buy, sell or hold that cryptocurrency or security. Guests and hosts are not affiliated with or endorsed by Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. You should make your own financial and investment decisions or consult respective professionals. Full disclosures are in the channel description. Learn more at Public.com/disclosures. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. There is a possibility of loss with any investment. Historical or hypothetical performance results, if mentioned, are presented for illustrative purposes only. Do not infer or assume that any securities, sectors or markets described in the videos were or will be profitable. Any statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements are strictly based on the current views, opinion, or assumptions of the person presenting them, and should not be taken as an indicator of performance nor should be relied upon as an investment advice.

Welcome to the rundown, your daily market update in under five minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Wednesday, February 7th. In today's episode, we're going to talk about a new streaming app that's targeted for sports fans. As a sports fan myself, at first I was annoyed, but you know, I think it might end up being a good thing. We also recap earnings from Snap and Ford. One of those companies' stock dropped by more than 30%. And finally, we end the show with a fun fact about cable TV. All right, let's get started.

Quick recap of stocks on Tuesday. It was a nice bounceback day after a tough start to the week. The Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ all squeezed out a small gain. The stock market rally has been driven by tech. That doesn't seem to be the case this week. The tech sector has been down for two days in a row. But hey, at least the overall markets are up and stocks are trying to make it two days in a row of gains. All three major indices are in the green today at the time of this recording around noon eastern.

And the S&P 500 is on the verge of breaking 5,000 for the first time ever. Hopefully by the time you're listening to this, we've crossed 5,000. All right, let's run through some headlines. Starting off with the launch of a new streaming app this year. That's right, everybody. We're going to get another streaming gap. This time it's going to be a super streaming gap targeted for sports fans. Disney, Warner Brothers, and Fox are partnering up on this one.

These big three content companies are partnering up to put all their sports streaming rights in one app. It's going to have content from pretty much every sport, NFL, NBA, college football, NHL, you name it. And my automatic reaction to whenever I hear a launch of a new streaming app, is like, oh, please no, not another app. But as a sports fan, you know, this one kind of makes sense. Because one of the most annoying things about watching sports now in the world of streaming is trying to find out which app to turn to. Sometimes you have to turn to Fox, sometimes you've got to turn to ESPN,

sometimes you're turning over to the peacock. It's kind of confusing, it's kind of annoying. And if these three companies can launch an app that'll be the go-to spot for sports content, that's going to be pretty nice. The app is expected to launch in the fall, and there's been no words on pricing just yet. The app is going to be jointly owned by Disney

Fox and Warner Brothers. You know, I'll check it out. By the way, Disney's reporting earnings today after the bell. I'm really looking forward to seeing what they have to say. Hopefully we get more details about the super app. Speaking of earnings, we are now smack dab in the middle of earnings season. A lot of companies are reporting earnings, and we had two big companies report earnings yesterday. So let's talk about it. One of the big winners was Ford. Ford stock is up more than 4% right now at the time of this recording around noon Eastern after reporting better than expected Q4 earnings. Ford put up pretty solid numbers. They beat top line and bottom line expectations. That's a fancy way of saying that Ford's revenues and profits both came in

higher than Wall Street estimates. Ford's Q4 revenues were $46 billion, with an operating profit of $1.1 billion. And the cherry on top, Ford's going to be paying out a special 18 cents per share dividend along with their normal 15 cents per share quarterly dividends. That's pretty nice to hear if you're a Ford investor. The earnings numbers show that Ford's business is doing pretty solid, at least the traditional business. Ford did warn that their EV division wasn't doing so hot. EV sales aren't growing like they once were, and Ford's EV division lost about $4.7 billion last year. And to make matters worse, Ford expects these losses to increase in 2024. I think we heard some similar comments from GM during their earnings last week.

But despite the EV issues, investors heard enough good news, and Ford is also projecting a strong Q1, and that's why the stock is one of the big winners for today. So that leaves us with Snap. It's the big loser for today. Snap stock is down more than 30% at the time of this recording around noon Eastern after reporting their Q4 earnings. So you're probably thinking like, hey, what are the earnings? earnings really that bad? You know, not really. Snap's revenues were up 5% to $1.36 billion, slightly less than estimates.

But what's crazy is that Snap lost $238 million in Q4. So the company is still losing money. Just blows my mind. I think one of the big reasons for the stock being down so much today is that there was some hope that because companies like Meta and Amazon were seeing their advertising business grow again, that Snap would see the same kind of growth. That doesn't seem to be the case. Like, for example, meta's ad business grew by 24% in Q4.

SNAPs only grew by 5%. But it's easy to see why investors were disappointed. Snap did blame some headwinds in their business, particularly the war in the Middle East. So now Snap, like every other tech company, is trying to reduce cost. They announced layoffs earlier this week cutting 10% of their workforce,

which is about 500 employees. I don't even really know how to feel about Snap anymore. I used to think that Snap was like a dying app because I'm someone that's in their early 30s and doesn't use it very often, so I thought that, oh, nobody uses Snapchat anymore. That's why the business is dying. But no, their users are still growing.

They now have 414 million daily active users. That means that 414 million people open the app every single day, which is up 10% from last year. But yet, Snap has just been unable to capitalize on their user growth and their business just continues to struggle. And I think investors are just running to lose their patience. Let's wrap up the show with a fun fact. Today's fun fact is about cable TV. Everyone seems to assume that cable is dead. It's not really dead.

The latest stats are like that there are still over 50. 55 million people that subscribe to cable. That is more than I was expecting. I'm not going to lie. I mean, the subscriber count is in decline. It's declining about 5% to 7% every year. And 10 years ago, there was 100 million people that were cable subscribers. But the fact that there's still over 50 million, that's not bad.

And I wonder what percentages of 55 million are only subscribed because of sports. And now with the launch of the Super app, I wonder if we're going to see a more rapid decline in cable numbers. Something to keep an eye on. All right, guys, that's all I got for you guys today. Thank you guys so much for listening. We've got more big time earnings coming up this week. I'll be recapping them in tomorrow show. So make sure you tune in.

I'll see you guys back here tomorrow. This is Public Live, your real-time resource for news events and trends in the markets. All views presented in this 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. Public Live hosts 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 slash disclosures. In paid partnership with Zaid Admani, brokerage services for U.S. listed, registered securities are offered by Open to the Public Investing Incorporated, member FINRA and SIPC.