🍿 Wonder Woman's theatrical plot twist
Hey Snackers,
Happy Thanksgiving week. We hope your turkeys don't look as sad (and 2020-appropriate) as the Rockefeller Christmas tree.
Stocks barely budged for the week as positive + negative news cancelled each other out. Positive: Pfizer/BioNTech requested FDA approval for their COVID-19 vaccine. Negative: cases are soaring, and CA imposed a curfew.
On the pod: Imagine a 99 Cents store had a baby with a flea market... and that baby was an app. We're talking Wish's IPO on our snackable pod.
Movie theaters' fate partly rests on Wonder Woman's (mixed) release
Save us, Gal... Theaters' holiday season rests in the hands of Wonder Woman Gal Gadot — aka, Princess of Themyscira (where everyone has an Israeli accent). AT&T-owned Warner Bros. is releasing "Wonder Woman 1984" on HBO Max and in theaters on Christmas Day. We've seen studios sending movies straight to streaming (Universal with "Trolls" and Disney with "Mulan") — but we've never quite seen this bold dual strategy.
- Warner learned its lesson with "Tenet." It bravely insisted on a theatrical release for the Christopher Nolan blockbuster, but has only grossed $350M worldwide — not enough to cover production + marketing costs.
- It's a win for HBO Max. Warner's streamer has brought in a respectable 8.6M subscribers since its May launch — but it's still far behind Disney+ (73M subs) and Netflix (195M subs).
The beginning of the end... of the "theatrical window." That's the period a movie has to be exclusively in theaters before home viewing release. AMC already slashed the window from 75 days to just 17 days for Universal films shown at its theaters. Last week, Universal struck another deal with Cinemark, shortening its window from three months to as little as 17 days, too.
This will be a big test for theaters... AMC, the world's largest theater chain, said it'll run out of cash soon without financial rescuing. 83% of its US theaters have reopened, but attendance is down ~85% — capacity is limited, and most blockbusters have been pushed to 2021 (cough, Disney). Meanwhile, Regal Cinemas is reportedly looking for a lifeline to avoid bankruptcy. "Wonder Woman” will test how love for the magic theater experience stacks up against streaming.
Who's up...
And I think it's gonna be Elon, lon time... 2020 keeps getting better for Rocket Man. Fresh off a historic SpaceX launch, Elon received an S&P 500 Club invite. Tesla will join the famous S&P 500 index on December 21st. It tracks the stocks of the 500 most valuable US public companies — and over $11T is invested in S&P-tracking funds. Fund managers will now have to buy Tesla stock, helping shares jump 20% for the week. But skeptics think the volatile stock could bring risk to the entire index.
The limit does not exist... to how many times you can retile the bathroom. Based on these recent home improvement earnings, the "House Hype" is still strong (going on four quarters now). Home Depot’s same-store US sales jumped 25% last quarter, and Lowe's soared 30%. You were probably ordering your Peacock Blue paint online and picking up curbside — Home Depot's digital sales rose 80%, and Lowe's more than doubled. Even anti-online rebel TJX is launching an ecommerce site for its HomeGoods chain.
...and who's down
Zzzs don't grow on trees... neither does foam for Casper. The direct-to-consumer mattress company's sales fell 3% last quarter, even though time spent in bed increased infinity%. Casper saw record website traffic, aka record interest in its products. But mattresses were out-of-stock for weeks at a time due to supply chain shortages, so it couldn't cash in on demand. Purple, which controls its own supply chain, saw sales jump 60%. Casper stock plunged 18% for the week and is down by over half this year, while Purple has more than 3X'd.
Darth Bezos strikes again... Amazon's e-Pharmacy dropped this week, offering Prime members free two-day shipping and savings benefits on prescription meds. The Zon has over 110M US Prime members — that's a major "code red" to OG pharmacies, which sell hundreds of billions in prescription meds each year. For the week: Walgreens stock dropped 12%, and CVS fell 6%. GoodRx plunged 18% since it's the "Expedia of prescription drugs" — Amazon's steep discounts threaten its entire value prop.
What else we’re Snackin’
- Work: 5 remote work practices for better work-life balance (walking meetings FTW).
- Achieve: What Warren Buffet considers the one greatest measure of success in life.
- Sweat: 8 tips for staying motivated to work out during the winter.
- Chill: If you're feeling burned out, try this simple trick to de-stress your routine.
- Succeed: The new rules for landing a job in the Covid era — specificity is key.
- Cook: How to make impossibly fluffy Japanese style pancakes (so Tok worthy).
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This Week
- Monday: Earnings expected from Warner Music Group
- Tuesday: Earnings expected from Medtronic, HP, Best Buy, Dell, Dollar Tree, and American Eagle
- Wednesday: Earnings expected from Deere
- Thursday: Market closed for Thanksgiving. Weekly jobless claims.
- Friday: Consumer sentiment index.
Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Tesla
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