🔋 Tesla’s “Megapack” bet
Hey Snackers,
The hottest merch in town can only be bought with a blood bag: the Red Cross teamed up with “Peanuts” on a Snoopy T-shirt to drive blood donations, and it’s going viral on TikTok.
Stocks closed mixed yesterday as traders were betting on a 70% chance that the Fed would hike rates by 25 basis points at its next meeting in May. The March inflation report, which gets released tomorrow, could also affect expectations.
Tesla’s new Shanghai Megapack plant could fuel its energy-storage biz as EV growth slows
Looks like a shipping container… actually a huge battery. Elon Musk said on Sunday that Tesla would begin building its Shanghai Megapack factory — and it has nothing to do with EVs. Tesla’s four-year-old Megapack biz is all about energy-storage solutions for businesses and homes. Picture: specially designed lithium batteries that store renewable energy from wind and the sun. While EVs are still Tesla's #1 moneymaker, there’s growing demand for energy-storage solutions as lithium prices plunge. The Shanghai Megapack plant is expected to be finished by early next year, and it could produce 10K Megapacks/year. Tesla said one Megapack battery can power 3.6K homes for an hour.
Supercharged China ties… Musk’s latest Shanghai investment comes as tensions boil between the US and China. The Biden admin has been urging automakers to move their manufacturing out of China and into the US, offering incentives like EV tax credits and billions in clean energy and battery investments. But it would be hard for Tesla to shift gears out of the world’s biggest EV market: last year, Tesla's Shanghai factory produced 700K+ cars (over half its global output).
Side hustles can turn into main gigs… By charging up in non-EV biz, Tesla can position itself as an all-around energy company. With EV competition heating up, Tesla’s been slashing car prices as its electric market share shrinks. Now it hopes Megapack could be the next big growth driver (some analysts think the biz could earn $10B+ in annual revenue). With energy-storage products like Megapack and Powerwall, Tesla aims to turn itself into a green-energy go-to.
Twitter’s (temporary) Substack blockade is the latest snafu for the beleaguered creator economy
The instant block… makes its corporate debut. After newsletter service Substack announced a Twitter-like feature called Notes last week, the Musk-led Twitter began retaliating. It blocked creators’ ability to embed tweets in Substack posts, banned likes and retweets on tweets with Substack links, and removed the ability to search “Substack” on Twitter. Over the weekend, Substack said that the “suppression of Substack publications” appeared to be over. But for a while the changes left lots of independent Substack creators without access to a critical distribution platform.
Unlike and unsubscribe… As the tech industry focuses on cutting costs, the fledgling creator economy is experiencing turbulence. In 2021, creator-focused companies like Patreon, Cameo, and Discord were thriving as we binged from our couches. But by the end of last year, funding for US creator startups was down 79%. It’s not just businesses feeling the end of the boom time — creators are taking a hit too.
- Amazon’s Twitch last week announced it would experiment with taking a cut from streamers’ brand sponsorships. In the fall, the company began taking a bigger chunk of creators’ subscription revenue.
- Snap cut payouts for its TikTok-esque Spotlight feature several times last year, and Meta last month paused a monetization feature that paid creators for posting Reels. Meanwhile, TikTok’s new creator fund isn’t clear on its revenue-sharing terms.
- Meta’s layoffs gutted an already overwhelmed customer-service team, leaving creators without contacts when they face issues like impersonators.
Alienating creators risks alienating audiences… because users come to platforms for the content. Notable Substack creators — including vocal Musk supporters — left Twitter after the Substack blockade began. In the creator-economy turmoil, brands that reward talent could get a leg up. In February, YouTube began sharing ad revenue with Shorts creators — a move that could see influencers ditching Reels and Spotlight for more lucrative short videos.
Heard on the Block: “Lido”
🤝 When you outsource the technical part of the job to a contractor…
Tomorrow's scheduled Shanghai update to the ethereum blockchain — if successful — will finally let people sell the ether that they locked up on the blockchain to validate transactions (aka staking). Lido is a protocol that stakes coins on behalf of users (for a cut of the proceeds) and issues stETH, a tradable token that represents one ether staked with Lido. Lido holds about a third of the $31B worth of staked ether.
What else we’re Snackin’
- Slick: Exxon is said to be in early talks to buy US fracking giant Pioneer Natural Resources (worth nearly $50B). After a string of record oil profits, Exxon can afford to snag a bigger chunk of the American shale industry.
- TikCash: ByteDance reportedly raked in record earnings last year, surpassing rival Chinese tech titans Alibaba and Tencent, even as losses widened in its key TikTok biz. Meanwhile, a Tik-ban threat is looming.
- Nelno: Reaching out to your student-loan servicer just got harder. Loan giant Nelnet cut its call-center hours and laid off 550 more employees after the Education Department made changes to its contract.
- Sliced: Shipments of Apple computers fell 40% on the year last quarter, greater than slumps seen by Dell, HP, and Lenovo. People and businesses are cutting back on pricey PCs after the pandemic WFH boom.
- RekTX: A report from FTX said the biz failed because of "hubris, incompetence, and greed." Picture: former execs like SBF apparently joked about misplacing millions of $$ and didn't follow best practices for securing clients' crypto.
Tuesday
- Earnings expected from CarMax and Albertsons
Authors of this Snacks own ethereum and shares: of Amazon, Exxon, Google, Tesla, Snap, and Apple
ID: 2837295