Hey Snackers,
Alexa just fired shot #1 in the Ear Wars — Amazon's working on an Apple AirPods rival.
Markets were busy prepping for Friday's big March jobs report as stocks enjoyed their 6th straight day trending up.
Corona-owner Constellation switches from wine to beer
We're getting bold aromas and notes of oak... from the earnings report of Constellation Brands. The liquor legend's beer sales jumped 9%, but wine slipped 8%. Blame that on 3 key trends:
- Americans are drinking less.
- When they do drink, it's higher-end stuff.
- And they want to try something lower-cal (but refreshing).
"Rosé all day" is over... "Expensive low-alcohol rosé occasionally" is the new thing. Constellation's adjusting to those shifting tastes in a big way with its wine portfolio — "Non-premium" is out and vintage Brunello is in:
- Under-$11 labels: Gone. Constellation just sold off 30 of its cheapest brands for $1.7B (it was hoping to get twice that).
- Over-$11 labels: They get all the attention. Constellation's promoting them through new partnerships with the PGA and a bunch of NFL teams.
Constellation's making alcohol more like seltzer... Rising Modelo sales have Constellation focused on beer. Next is Corona Refresca, the Mexican brand's 1st non-beer (but beer-branded) option that comes this month. Look out for its Insta-worthy guava or coconut-lime flavor cans. Pairs well with those 3 trends above. ⬆️⬆️
Tesla sold way fewer cars last quarter (and Elon hit court)
Just one of those days... Shares of the electric car pioneer Tesla sank 8% Thursday on 1 business headline and 1 legal one:
- Both its car production and deliveries were down across every Tesla model in the last quarter of 2018.
- Elon Musk visited court after ignoring an SEC order for Tesla lawyers to screen his tweets pre-tweet (the judge gave him 2 weeks to agree to a settlement with the SEC).
63K eCars delivered — But that's down 31%... And Tesla got right down to the excuses for coming up short:
- Ships take time: Tesla began exporting its lower-priced Model 3 to China and Europe. It takes a while for them to get there.
- $$$: That US government subsidy to encourage electric car purchases? Just got cut in half, making Teslas more expensive for customers.
Tesla shares have no chill... The polarizing CEO attracts lovers and haters (think pineapple on pizza). Thursday's report makes Tesla's goal for 360K-400K car deliveries this year look unreachable, so investors piled on the hate and sold shares. They think it'll run out of money. Others still think it's the car company of the future.
Snap jumps into video-gaming
Two struggling tech icons got together... The result is Bitmoji Party. Snap's launching video games with Bitmoji, the app it bought in 2016 to create custom avatars, the cuter cartoon vision of yourself. "Words With Friends" creator Zynga's adding 5 more games to Snapchat soon. All multi-player. All smartphone playable.
Engagement. Engagement. Engagement... Engagement. That's what social networks do. Snap's under pressure to add users and power engagement back up since Instagram copied its Stories in 2016. But this gaming move's not that new:
- Facebook got gaming in 2009 with Farmville. Now 700M humans game there.
- Amazon dropped $970M for the live-streaming, watch-your-buddy-pwn platform Twitch in 2014. One celebri-gamer now has 14M Twitch followers.
It always comes back to ads... A live Bitmoji Party brings physical friends together digitally, for free. And Snap rose 1% on hopes you'll love Snap-gaming so much you'll tolerate ads to earn virtual coins. Fortnite games hope you pay up for in-game purchases (picture digital you in a new costume). But ads are Snap's main game.
What else we’re Snackin’
- Uncoupling: Amazon's Jeff Bezos just finalized his divorce — He gets 75% of the couple's shares, and MacKenzie Bezos gave him her voting rights
- Uncord: Roku downgraded on worries Apple and Amazon will squash its streaming biz
- IPO'd: Tradeweb is an electronic trading platform that (kinda meta) just IPO'd — And then it jumped 28%
- Sincerely: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon's annual letter to shareholders muses on cybersecurity, capitalism, and recessions
- Homey: The US average home price hit a record high of $300K (that's thanks to a surge in houses above $750K)
Friday
- The big March jobs report
Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Roku, Tesla, and Amazon.