💊 Kaiser’s historic strike

American labor gets a clean bill of health… as another industry hits the picket lines. More than 75K nurses, pharmacists, and other union employees of the Kaiser Permanente health system began a three-day strike yesterday. It’s the largest healthcare strike in US history, as workers attempt to force Kaiser to remedy a pandemic staffing shortage that they say is hurting patients and employees.

• Seeking care: Two-thirds of Kaiser workers said they were aware of medical care being delayed or denied because of understaffing, one union survey suggested. And 11% of Kaiser’s union positions were vacant as of this spring. Staffing concerns were also behind an NYC nurses’ strike earlier this year.

• Prognosis: The US faces a healthcare-worker shortage that worsened during the pandemic — 330K quit in 2021 alone. By the early 2030s, the country could face a deficit of 300K+ nurses and physicians as the population ages. 

• Patience: Kaiser, one of the US’s largest healthcare providers, said its hospitals would remain open through the strike, staffed by doctors and replacement workers. Still, Kaiser’s 13M patients can expect delays.

Must be the season of the strike… or maybe an era. Hundreds of thousands of US workers across industries have walked off — or threatened to walk off — jobs this year. Fueling the movement: understaffing, wage stagnation, and the threat of tech like AI. Workers have notched wins in transportation (UPS) and entertainment (writers), while the dust waits to settle on other battles in automotive, entertainment, and hospitality. Meanwhile, public opinion continues to lean heavily toward workers.

Instagram made me buy it… but AI made me keep it. Techy cosmetics company Oddity said its sales were up nearly 60% this year in its preliminary quarterly earnings. Oddity is the tech-obsessed parent company of TikTok-popular makeup brands Il Makiage and Spoiled Child. Picture: AR shade-matching and algorithmic foundation quizzes. The biz uses machine-learning models to deliver “game-changing ingredient innovation,” its CEO said.

• Fresh face: Oddity stock is down 40% since its July debut. The company says it expects ~30% sales growth for the third quarter.

• Lab coat of foundation: In April, Oddity said it would buy biotech startup Revela and open Oddity Labs. The goal: apply molecular pharma techniques to cosmetics development.

From pores to pixels… Oddity doesn’t consider itself a beauty biz. It prides itself on being a tech company, as shown by its intense website. Apart from saying it’s “built to be the most impactful platform of our lifetime,” Oddity highlights its “massive data lake” and 40M+ users who it says help it to develop better products and recommendations. The startup said it doesn’t hire from the OG beauty industry, but that it recruits technology specialists and is focused on innovation (“our enemy is today”).

🎴 When you suddenly can’t find anyone to trade your “Magic: The Gathering” cards with…

FTX’s implosion left a monster hole in the crypto market. Traders and market makers saw their funds tangled up in bankruptcy, or — as prosecutors plan to argue in the Sam Bankman-Fried trial — embezzled and lost. Practically overnight, crypto became way less liquid (read: potentially more volatile) as big players nursed losses. That liquidity drop, dubbed the “Alameda Gap” after SBF’s crypto-trading biz Alameda Research, still persists nearly a year after FTX’s collapse.

• Cart: Amazon used an algorithm (“Project Nessie”) to keep a price advantage over rivals like Target, an FTC suit alleges. It won’t help Amazon’s case against the commission, which has sued to end Amazon’s “monopolistic control.” 

• Cracked: Cal-Maine shares fell 7% after the US’s largest egg producer said Q1 profits were down 99% on the year. Egg prices surged to records last year, but have fallen back to earth. 

• Drive: Ford’s trucks helped drive Q3 sales up ~8% on the year while rival GM saw revenue surge 21%. Despite the strong #s, the UAW strike could threaten automakers’ earnings. 

• Airbnbeyond: Airbnb’s CEO said the biz will increasingly focus on long-term rentals, and possibly car rentals. The move could help Airbnb stay in cities like NYC, where short-term rentals are now heavily restricted.

• Prologue: Spotify will give paying subscribers 15 hours of audiobook streams every month as it expands beyond tunes and pods, aiming to rival Amazon’s Audible, which dominates audiobooks.

• Initial jobless claims

• Earnings expected from Constellation Brands, Lamb Weston, ConAgra, and Levi 

Authors of this Snacks own shares of: Amazon, GM, and Lamb Weston

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