👓 Buffett’s back
![The Oracle of Omaha makes a $12B comeback [Scott Olson/Getty Images]](https://cdn.robinhood.com/static_content/mwphzyq69oso/en-US/assets/files/3ldjh6QuLSUszLP6bMkduR_1_GettyImages-451880974.jpg)
Hey Snackers,
Don’t leave a blank space on this homework, or you’ll have bad blood with the prof: NYU just wrapped up its first Taylor Swift class, covering entrepreneurship, pop culture, and the status of that scarf.
Stocks ticked down after Fed Chair Jerome Powell reiterated plans to take tough action against inflation, which he called “much too high.” Meanwhile, Russia said that President Biden’s decision to label President Putin a “war criminal” has put Russian-American relations on the verge of a breakdown.
Berkshire shows its dedication to old-school industries in Buffett's biggest deal since 2016
Not the continental-breakfast variety... Buffett just added a lot to his plate. Warren Buffett's legendary holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns businesses like Geico, Duracell, and Dairy Queen, and has major investments in blue-chip companies like Coca-Cola, Apple, and Amex (hence: "holding"). Now the 91-year-old billionaire is doing his biggest deal in six years:
- Double down: Berkshire agreed to buy insurance conglomerate Alleghany for $11.6B in cash. Insurance = a Berkshire bread-and-butter industry that generates a fifth of its profits.
- Double up: Alleghany stock jumped 25% yesterday as Berkshire offered Alleghany shareholders a sweet premium to buy their stock.
A Cherry Coke a day... Even with a $120B net worth, Buffett's famous for his modest lifestyle. Think: still living in the Omaha house he bought in the ’50s, having Coke and McMuffins for breakfast, and donating most of his $$ instead of splurging. He’s been conservative with investments too:
- Berkshire hasn’t made a big acquisition since 2016, opting to hoard its nearly $150B cash pile and invest in companies it already holds. In his popular shareholder letter last month, Buffett complained that nothing looked attractive.
- Despite its conservative approach, Berkshire has beat the overall market when compared against the S&P 500. Last week its Class A stock surpassed $500K/share (not a typo), and has hit a new high on the Allegheny deal.
Slow and steady wins the race… at least for Buffett. The Oracle of Omaha’s 60-year investment strategy focuses on un-sexy but reliable industries like insurance and utilities — and, yes, even fossil fuels. Rule #5 of Berkshire's acquisition criteria: invest in "simple businesses (if there's lots of technology, we won't understand it)." Before the Allegheny deal, Berkshire was doubling down on OG investments like Occidental Petroleum. As high-growth tech stocks have plunged, Berkshire has been more resilient thanks to its more defensive investments like oil and insurance.
Match launches a dating app for single parents, as the Tinder owner continues to niche-ify the dating pool
Date night on a school night… there’s an app for that. Yesterday Match launched Stir, a dating app for single parents. Match owns over a dozen matchmaking apps, like Tinder and Hinge, which together reach 16M+ paying users worldwide. Now Match is targeting the 20M single US parents.
- Penciling in: Stir’s “me time” feature lets busy parents create a calendar-like schedule so that potential matches can see the best time to meet between work and soccer practice.
- Sans-swipe: Users can scroll from a roster of local singles, but the Tinder-esque swipe is gone.
- Freemium: Stir is free to download and use, but for $40/month you get bonus features like “super likes” to let people know you’re really into their profile pic.
Balancing act… The US has the world’s highest rate of one-parent homes, but it’s a market overlooked by dating services. A quarter of single parents say coordinating schedules prevents them from dating. On mainstream apps, singles with kids have a harder time connecting to those without: over half say they’ve been ghosted after a first date. With Stir:
- Match can grow its Western user base, which is recovering faster compared with Asian countries, where Covid lockdowns have been blocking meetups.
- Match has been building a suite of dating apps based on relationship type (hook up vs. committed), age, race, and religious preferences — now it’s targeting based on family structures.
You can go wide or you can go niche… While rival Bumble is expanding into platonic relationships (like: Bumble Biz and Bumble BFF), Match is going all in on romance with a segmentation strategy. Picture: apps like Hawaya, which caters to Muslim singles, and OurTime, aimed at singles over 50. The timing seems right: last quarter Match’s sales grew 24% — but paid users fell for the first time since the pandemic began.
What else we’re Snackin’
- CO2: A green gamechanger: the SEC has formally proposed a sweeping rule that will require publicly traded companies to report their impact on climate change, including greenhouse-gas emissions and how much energy they use.
- Jordan: Nike unboxed expectation-beating sales growth despite global supply issues, thanking its focus on direct-to-consumer sales (think: Nike app vs. Foot Locker). But the stock’s still down 20% this year.
- Bit: Big banks are caving to crypto: Goldman Sachs is the first to trade crypto options directly, opening the door to more crypto products on Wall Street after years of regulatory concerns.
- Spin: Doubling down on driverless-ness: GM’s pouring another $3.5B into its self-driving subsidiary Cruise, as SoftBank sells its stake. Cruise opened its robo-taxis to the public last month, but is still losing cash.
- China: Foxconn, the main assembler of iPhones, said its Shenzhen plants are running at full capacity again after the city recently shut down to test all 17M residents for Covid. Meanwhile, Shanghai Disneyland just closed.
Tuesday
- Earnings expected from Adobe, Poshmark, and BuzzFeed
Authors of this Snacks own: shares of Berkshire Hathaway, Match, Apple, and GM
ID: 2090325