Hey Snackers,
The number of chicken wings consumed on Super Bowl Sunday is expected to hit a record 1.4B, according to the National Chicken Council. And Wingstop stock is popping (say it 5X fast).
Stocks hit record highs yesterday as weekly jobless claims fell.
Apple might release a self-driving EV — it's not the first, but could it be the best?
iPhone on wheels... but you prob won't need the AUX cord. The iCar has been rumored since 2015. Just like with the rest of its products, Apple isn't building/assembling it itself. Now we finally know who the manufacturer might be (spoiler: not Tesla).
- The news: Apple is reportedly close to sealing a deal with Hyundai-Kia to make an Apple-branded, fully self-driving electric car. Tentative ETA: 2024. Secretive Apple didn't confirm.
- The deets: The "Apple Car" would be designed in Cupertino... and manufactured at a Kia assembly plant in Georgia. But there's a chance the deal won’t happen.
2 Fast 2 Furious... Apple's first car attempt, "Project Titan," began in 2014 and crashed in 2019. So why is the Fruit trying again? To put it in marketing terms: the TAM is huge. Total addressable market = the total amount of money companies could make selling a specific product/service.
- $500B: The annual TAM for smartphones. Apple controls more than a 30% share of that, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Katie Huberty.
- $10T: The TAM for global mobility. Apple would need only a 2% share of that market to match the size of its iPhone biz (it made $66B in iPhone sales just last quarter).
Apple’s not a first mover. It’s a second shaker... Apple's working on a fully autonomous EV... but a bunch of other companies will probably get there first (Google's Waymo, GM's Cruise, and Tesla's Tesla are well on their way). But Apple cares more about being the best than being the first. BlackBerry came before iPhone, but iPhone won. Fitbit came before Apple Watch, but Apple Watch won. Bragi made the first truly wireless earbuds, but AirPods won. And Tesla came before Apple Car... but Apple doesn't care.
The racial wealth gap: how corporations are helping (in a very specific way)
Mind the gap... 2020 highlighted inequality in America, including one key element: the racial wealth gap. A legacy of slavery and discrimination contributes to the massive gap in generational wealth-building. Segregation affected educational and job opportunities for Black Americans. Redlining, a discriminatory practice that discouraged providing loans in areas with large Black communities, stunted Black home ownership. We’re still seeing the effects of those policies today:
- Wealth: The typical white family has eight times the wealth of the typical Black family ($188K vs. $24K), and 5X that of a typical Hispanic family.
- Ownership: Nearly 75% of white Americans owned their homes at the end of 2020, compared with less than half of Black Americans.
- Income: White workers, on average, are paid more than Black and Latino workers at almost every education level.
Closing the gap... is good not only for society, but also for the American economy: Citi found that if these financial gaps are closed today, $5T would be added to the economy over the next five years. From 2016 to 2019, median wealth for Black Americans grew 33%, compared to 3% for white households. But there’s still much left to be done.
Since 2020... more companies have started to help, through everything from diversity hiring efforts to educational grants and donations. But many of these corporate initiatives aren’t cash giveaways: they’re loans and investments.
- JPMorgan Chase pledged $30B over the next five years toward loans for Black, Latino, and underserved communities. Citi dedicated $1B to support home and business loans for communities of color.
- Twitter is investing $100M in "community development financial institutions," which are dedicated to providing lending and banking services to low-income, underbanked customers — many of whom are people of color. Netflix launched a similar effort.
- ServiceNow created a $100M racial equity fund to promote more lending within Black communities.
Equal access to capital is key... to narrowing the wealth gap. Homeownership has been one of the greatest contributors to wealth creation for families: the average homeowner in 2019 had a household wealth of $255K, compared to the typical renter, with ~$6K. But Black individuals and communities have traditionally been the most likely to be denied access to capital — and Black families are still much more likely to be denied mortgages. That's why lending to and investing in Black communities is crucial to closing the gap today.
What else we’re Snackin’
- Ghosted: Snap beat expectations on earnings and user growth last quarter. But the stock plunged after-hours on a projected loss for this quarter.
- Pinning: Pinterest's sales soared 48% in 2020 as we mood-boarded our blues away. It grew to 459M monthly users.
- Shutdown: Myanmar blocks Facebook access after its citizens protested the military coup that ousted the country's elected government.
- DNA: Genetics testing company 23andMe is going public at a ~$3.5B valuation by merging with a SPAC set up by Richard Branson.
- Contour: Affordable makeup company E.l.f. saw sales jump 10% last quarter, outperforming larger rivals like Coty and L'Oreal.
- Rack: Nordstrom expects sales to rise 25% in 2021, and says online sales will make up half of its biz. Customers love the Rack treasure hunt.
Friday
- January unemployment rate released
Authors of this Snacks own shares of: Apple and Snap
ID: 1512994