Highlight of our 4-day holiday-shortened week: The joy of discovering Amazon's (adorable) mascot. It's orange, blob-ish, and goes by "Peccy."
Despite hype-citement for two big IPOs, the S&P 500 slipped for its 1st weekly loss in a month. But profits are winning: 74% of 1st quarter earnings so far have beaten analysts' expectations. That's pushed markets to within 1% of their record highs.
Who's up...
Get Yoshi a passport... For the first time, the Chinese government will allow Nintendo's Switch gaming console to be sold in China, along with a new Super Mario Brothers game. Shares of the Japanese legend jumped 12% to their highest point in 6 months as they enter Earth's biggest gaming market.
Acquisition with an asterisk... Canadian cannabis icon Canopy Growth rose 4% for its 4/20 Eve "complex transaction with a simple objective": Buy American pot producer Acreage Holdings. The $3.4B deal only happens if the US government first legalizes cannabis nationwide. If it does, Canopy will own Acreage's 20-state head start.
Best week ever... First Qualcomm ended its patent dispute with Apple. Then it rekindled the relationship — iPhones will be powered by Qualcomm chips for the next six years (at least). The cherry on top was the announcement from Qualcomm's only other real competitor in 5G phone chips — Intel — that it's quitting that biz. Add it all up and Qualcomm stock rose 42% last week.
...And who's down
"Alexa, what happened to Spotify stock?"... It fell after Amazon stealthily launched free music (with ads) for anyone with an Echo device (no Prime membership needed). Now Spotify's not the only one offering Adele for free, streaming, and on-demand.
If these two should not be joined in matrimony... speak now. The Justice Department might. The WSJ reported that regulators plan to block the $26B merger of US telecom's #3 and #4 players because it would be an "unacceptable threat to competition." That dropped shares of Sprint and T-Mobile.
Bonus: T-Mobile also just launched a banking product — More on that in our podcast.
Describe your pain on a scale from 1 to 10... Healthcare investors are feeling it as the 2020 election oven preheats. "Medicare For All" from the left has health insurers Cigna, United Health, and Anthem down over 10% in just six trading days. And momentum in DC to stop drug price-gouging has pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Eli Lily off over 8%.
Pinterest and Zoom jumped on IPO Day — Here are the differences
Rookie report... IPO-Palooza continued with Pinterest and Zoom, which both debuted Thursday. Digital tackboard Pinterest jumped 25% on day #1 of trading, while the video conference pioneer surged 72%. Here are the scouting reports:
Zoom's mission: “To make video communications frictionless.”
- Opportunities: This century's flexible work-from-home rules boost corporate needs for non-brutal video chat.
- Challenges: Google, Microsoft (which owns Skype), and Cisco are resource-rich and have been doing this for years.
- Fun fact: Uber likes to zoom — Its employees clock 14M meeting minutes of Zoom per month.
Pinterest's mission: “To bring everyone the inspiration to create a life they love.”
- Opportunities: 80% of US women age 18-64 who have children use it. So do over half of Millennials. That combo sets trends.
- Challenges: Pinterest says it's a social network for positivity — But social networks are ad companies, which means competing with Facebook and Google. Snap's a case study in trying to do that.
- Fun fact: 88% of Pinners purchase a product they pin.
One's focused on the now, the other on the future... The Silicon Valley pair evolved from unicorn status by going public, and they're both worth similar amounts based on their share price ($13B for Pinterest, $16B for Zoom). But Zoom's already profitable ($7.5M in 2018) with 344 customers paying $100K or more per year. Pinterest isn't profitable ($63M loss) with its 250M users. Not all ex-unicorns are alike, so it's best to learn up on their pedigrees.
What else we’re Snackin’
- Work: 28 ice-breaker questions for your next team meeting (we brought #8 up at dinner)
- Life: An app that manages your privacy for you @Alexa
- Money: Netflix/Hulu/Spotify. Subscriptions add up. Here are 7 ways to deal.
- Venture: Serena Williams' "secret" venture capital portfolio
- Crypto: How blockchain technology could change the art world
- Do: Calculate all the plastic trash you generated in the last year
This Week
- Monday: Tesla hosts mysterious "Autonomy Investor Day". Stock markets closed in Europe and China for Easter Monday, open in US.
- Tuesday: Earnings from Snap, Twitter, Verizon, eBay, Lockheed Martin
- Wednesday: Earnings from Facebook, Chipotle, Domino's, Microsoft, Boeing, PayPal, Tesla
- Thursday: Earnings from Ford, Comcast, Intel, Starbucks
- Friday: Earnings from Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Deutsche Bank. We get our first peek at America's 1st quarter GDP. Avengers: Endgame opens in movie theaters.
Disclosure: An author of this Snacks owns shares of Amazon and Tesla.