Sherwood
Monday Jun.17, 2019

"Good boy, Chewy.com. Good boy."

_Sit. Stay. And enjoy the "pet humanization" trend._
_Sit. Stay. And enjoy the "pet humanization" trend._

Hat trick.

Markets budged up last week, but 3 fresh IPOs all surged over 50%: cybersecurity icon CrowdStrike, gig platform Fiverr, and pet best friend Chewy.

Now Slack's up to list its shares publicly on Thursday (@here).

Highs

Who's up...

AM, FM, CD, AUX, Spotify... The Swedish music streamer just called shotgun on your commute with "Your Daily Drive" — That's Spotify's new custom playlist to replace your local morning radio show with a combo of music and news (@Spotify what about traffic and weather?). If Your Daily Drive wins ears, it could eat into conventional radio's shocking 17% share of American adults' daily time spent with media.

Fancy armoire rebel... While the rest of retail pushes online, Restoration Hardware (aggressively) does the opposite. And it's working. Quarterly sales jumped another 7% as RH's $50M brick-and-mortar "Galleries," concept stores worthy of a school field trip, drive sales higher. Now it's launching two new 130+ page physical catalogs: "RH Beach" and "RH Ski." Perfect for second nest builders.

Lunch on the Grubhub team... Your late-night meal hero's stock jumped 8% on word Amazon is out of the food delivery kitchen — "Amazon Restaurants" officially shuts down next week. Now Grubhub has to worry about Uber Eats, Postmates, and DoorDash. Together, those 4 leaders control 90% of online-ordered US food delivery (Amazon only nibbled 2%). But Grubhub can't get comfy — Amazon just led a $575M investment in the UK's fast-growing Deliveroo.

Lows

...And who's down

333 slides... Venture capitalist Mary Meeker's legendary "Internet Trends Report" comes out once a year. Surprisingly, internet adoption hit its slowest pace worldwide yet (just 6% more humans logged on this year compared to last). Not so surprising? Americans are unhealthily obsessed (we average 6.3 hours/day online). But the report was rainy for Google and Facebook — Twitter and Amazon stole more of the online ad market, while targeted ad regulation could weaken FB and GOOG's data advantage.

Startup auction... GE stock is down almost 70% since 2016. Its painful transformation from corporate titan to humbled has-been just hit a low-point — Reports showed it's desperate to sell off its investments in over 100 startups (including Elon Musk's Virgin Hyperloop One). Instead of waiting for those shares to (ideally) blossom into way-more-valuable IPO stocks, GE wants cash now to pay down debt.

Chip and dip 6%... In a week free from major trade war drama, San Jose-based chip-maker Broadcom dropped this pre-weekend: It's expecting $2B less revenue this year than it forecasted in March. The cause: American companies have been stopped by President Trump from doing business with China's Huawei, the world's 2nd largest phone company. Chip stocks Nvidia and AMD both sank on this wake-up call.

Fetch

3 days. 3 IPOs. 3 big numbers.

Hungry for some unicorn... A trio of companies went public last week with Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) — They all had reached $1B+ valuations when they were private, and they all rely on the internet to disrupt something. Of the more than 60 IPOs so far this year, a dozen have popped by over 50% on Day 1 of trading. Crowdstrike, Fiverr, and Chewy are into that trend.

90%, 71%, and 59%... those are the percentages of the week — They're the boosts in share prices on the first day of trading for last week's big three:

  • CrowdStrike: The struggle with hacking is real. CrowdStrike won street cred as the first to notice the DNC's breach by Russia before the '16 election. Now, it's worth $12.6B (according to its market capitalization) as it defends business from cybercrime.
  • Fiverr: The freelancer's Uber, Fiverr connects you with gig workers who have BAs, MAs, or PhD-qualified jobs. Think graphic design, SEO help, or language translation, without full-time commitment.
  • Chewy: The online everything store for pets, Chewy was bought by PetSmart in 2017 for just $3.4B. Now its parent company's letting it off-leash, and it's worth $14B after Friday's surge. Thank "pet humanization," because our generation can afford puppies, not babies (FYI, Chewy sends condolence notes if your Fido passes away).

The highest profile unicorns have struggled... The decade-long countdown for Uber and Lyft's IPOs burned out the hype — Both of their stocks are still "underwater," aka their share price is lower than on IPO-day. But the stocks without household names are living their best lives. This puts still-private Airbnb and WeWork in an awkward situation. To IPO or to wait?

What else we’re Snackin’

  • Work: Job candidates lie in 3 ways — Here's how to tell when
  • Life: There are 2 types of decision-makers ("assessment" vs. "locomotion") — Know yours
  • Money: Understanding "the Dow" (getting Dow'd is like getting knighted)
  • Venture: All the venture capital money flowing into pizza. Pizza.
  • Do: Check out "Juneteenth" = June + 19th, the emancipation holiday

This Week

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