Hey Snackers,
Microsoft just filed a patent for tech that rates meetings based on your facial expressions. What's the score for Resting Zoom Face?
Stocks dipped yesterday but closed out November with big gains. The Dow jumped 12%, notching its best month in over 30 years.
Under Armour launches Steph "Curry Brand," shooting for Nike-Jordan hype
Steph Curry with the shot... Under Armour's been cooking with the sauce. The sports apparel company is trying to take its lackluster 2020 from 0 to 100 real quick... with a major celeb partnership.
- Curry Brand: UA's new line with NBA legend Steph Curry. Expect men's shoes and clothes for sports from basketball to golf — and women's apparel eventually, too.
- Jordan Brand: What UA's going for. Nike's Jordan brand notched record sales last quarter, and its AF1 is the most-purchased shoe of 2020 (your Insta feed knows).
Spice Up This House... UA thinks Curry could do that. It's been laser-focused on "technical performance apparel" (aka: the opposite of athleisure). UA reminds you of the sweat-wicking jersey you wore in track — not the comfy leggings you WFH in. UA's hoping this buzzy new brand will curry favor with Gen Z.
- Nike = #1 favorite apparel brand among teens for the past 10 years, according to Piper Sandler. Its stock is up 31% this year on the work(out)-from-home life. Lulu's up 59%.
- UA = #1 "no longer worn" brand among male teens (way harsh, Tai). Its stock is down 24% this year because professional sports were cancelled (along with your track meet).
Consumers want a happy medium... between function and fashion. UA's brand is too intense/intimidating to be worn for your grocery speed walk. UA needs to soften its look to gain mass appeal, but it doesn't have to give up its high-quality performance bar to do that. It's a matter of style and marketing. Curry Brand could be the perfect way to go mainstream.
Facebook dives deeper into "social commerce" with a $1B customer service purchase
Try funky spelling... for that Unicorn Status. Facebook is buying customer service startup Kustomer, reportedly for more than $1B. Kustomer unifies customer interactions from multiple channels to give support reps a full picture. Think: "Cindy sent four Insta DMs, three chatbot messages, and 10 emails today — send her an apology gift card." FB already uses Kustomer to help businesses aggregate customer Qs from Messenger and Instagram.
WhatsInstaBook... Kustomer's all-in-one customer relationship service perfectly fits FB’s social ecommerce mega-app ambitions. FB has been pushing to integrate messaging and payments across its "family of apps" (FB, Insta, WhatsApp, Messenger). This acquisition could further its goal of becoming the "social commerce" platform (Zuck's words).
- Shop: In May, Facebook intro’d “Shops," letting businesses set up digital storefronts across FB/Instagram.
- Pay: In August, Facebook unified its payment tools under “Facebook Financial” and announced plans to integrate messaging across apps.
- Support: Now, Facebook wants to offer Kustomer's platform as a perk to lure and lock in businesses.
The "next billion" could be businesses... Facebook has 2.5B users — it's betting that its next billion will come from businesses. 200M businesses use FB, but now it's investing big to reach Amazon-level ecommerce status. Businesses can boost users’ time spent and ad sales (a big deal for FB, which is almost 100% ad-reliant). But they also give FB a non-ad revenue stream: FB gets a cut of each sale made on its apps. It's even starting to charge for WhatsApp Business services.
This $44B acquisition is the biggest of 2020 — it's all about the market data
Must've missed the Black Friday deals... Data giant S&P Global is buying London-based IHS Markit for a mind-numbing $44B. Not only does IHS Markit take the cake for the worst company name of all time — it's also the priciest acquisition of 2020.
- Data for breakfast: Like Bloomberg with its terminal biz, S&P Global is one of the biggest financial info sources (#finfo).
- Lunch: It gives countries and companies credit ratings, and equips analysts and fund managers with meaty financial intel.
- And dinner: It also charges for real-time visibility into its famous S&P 500 index.
Are you a derivative?... Because I see you in my future. S&P wants to buy IHS to create a massive finfo force and reduce competition. But the deal still needs to be OK'd by regulators. BTW: data from companies like IHS and S&P trickles down to retail investors like us, too (in articles and financial reports).
Data is a competitive advantage... That's Wall Street's way of saying "knowledge is power." This mega-deal emphasizes the importance of big data for financial markets (and their info-obsessed financiers and trading algorithms). S&P Global stock is at an all-time high because investors know Wall Street is willing to pay up big for those insights.
What else we’re Snackin’
- OKzoomer: Zoom's sales more than quadrupled last quarter from the same quarter last year, beating expectations.
- Vax: Moderna applies for approval for its Covid-19 vaccine, while Pfizer's vax is already under regulatory review (no rush).
- Awk: GM ditches plans to invest $2B in e-truck maker Nikola and will no longer be producing its Badger pickup — Nikola stock plunged 27%.
- IPO: Airbnb and DoorDash are both aiming for higher-than-expected valuations ahead of going public (2020 has been surprisingly kind to IPOs).
- Nom: Food delivery app HungryPanda raises $70M to cater to Chinese consumers living abroad (the app is entirely in Mandarin).
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Tuesday
- Earnings expected from Salesforce
Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Microsoft, Alphabet, and Moderna
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