Hey Snackers,
Reminder: Plan the excuses today. An estimated 10.7M people are expected to call in sick after Sunday's Game of Thrones finale.
Markets are focused on rebounding from this week's 2nd worst day of the year — The Dow jumped over 200 points Thursday.
Pinterest's inspiration-less first-ever earnings report
"Where to hide from investors"... We actually found a good Pinterest board for exactly that. In its first-ever earnings report since last month's IPO, Pinterest found a theme: slowing growth. Profits, revenues, user growth. All slowed. Then shares of the social-network-for-curating-nice-things dropped 15%. Here are 2 numbers to un-Pin.
- 3X: That's how many times larger the $41M loss was than analysts expected.
- 291M: That's how many Pinners there are out there showing off very nice/symmetrical pictures of anything.
Fewer pins, more promos... Your Snacks team compared Pinterest's average revenue per user — aka the number of ads users see as they scroll for the ideal guest bathroom wallpaper — to Facebook's.
- Pinterest made $0.73 of revenue per user last quarter.
- Facebook was almost 10-times that at $6.42.
- The key to profits for Pinterest: Add more ads mid-scroll without overly annoying customers (80% of them are American moms between 18-64).
This is the nicer social media company... It's nice by not showing users as many ads as other social networks do. And it's nice by not having as much misinformation/hateful news-focused content as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and other platforms do. One of those is nice for investors, the other not so much.
The new era of video game wars: Sony and Microsoft shake hands
Mutual hatred... is a powerful motivator #WhiteWalkers. Long-time enemies Sony and Microsoft battled admirably in the multi-phase Playstation vs. Xbox video game wars of our youth. Now they're truc-ing: An "unusual" partnership on cloud computing, the crucial engine that powers modern, online gaming.
It's hairy out there... A few major enemies forced this frenemy-ship:
- "The tool kit": Amazon's Lumberyard lets anyone make their own games on its very-much-leading Amazon Web Services platform.
- "The Holy Grail": That's what they're calling Stadia — It lets anyone, anywhere begin playing big games sans gaming console.
Play anything on any device... That's the future of gaming, according to Microsoft. So if a surprise partnership with Sony can help it achieve that in the $130B video game market, Microsoft is down to team up.
Silicon Valley just got a new stock exchange: The Long Term Stock Exchange
Congratulations. It's a beautiful healthy... platform for securities trading. America just birthed its 14th stock exchange, the uncreatively named Long Term Stock Exchange. LTSE is just as regulated as siblings New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq (it was approved by the SEC Friday and expects to open this year), but it's mission-oriented: It wants to fix "short-termism."
Quarter's over. On to the next quarter... Currently, public companies must calculate, prep, and announce their earnings reports every three months. Focusing on short-term results only benefits short-term focused traders — Hedge funds and activist investors. Instead, LTSE introduces 3 rules to encourage long-term thinking:
- Seniority-based voting: Older shares get more voting power. So the more in it for the long haul you are = the more power you have as a shareholder.
- Tie exec pay to long-term metrics: Limit CEOs from floating away on golden parachutes.
- No forecasts for quarterly earnings: None. Investors should care about 3 years, not 3 months.
This is Silicon Valley's farm for unicorns... You've seen the volatility of recent tech IPOs Uber, Lyft, and Pinterest. Long Term Stock Exchange wants to give companies the benefits of public markets (raise $$, trade your stock!), while cutting the negatives (no sacraficing long-term health for short-term profits). It's crafted for Silicon Valley's finest.
What else we’re Snackin’
- Midas: Goldman makes its biggest acquisition in nearly 20 years: A wealth management firm
- Fancy: Burberry is closing 10% of its stores worldwide to regain its exclusivity
- Spared: Snap jumps 7% after Instagram kills its Snapchat clone, Instagram Direct
- Ranked: Fortune announces its annual Fortune 500 list
- Protein: Walmart's earning reveal a 37% jump in ecommerce sales powered by grocery orders
- Unplugged: Nvidia makes the chips fueling data centers — now it says its clients are putting a "pause" on investing in those data centers
Friday
- Luckin Coffee's IPO
- Earnings from John Deere
Disclosure: An author of this Snacks owns shares of Amazon and Sony.