TODAY IN HISTORY
2003: Apple launches the iTunes store and completely revolutionizes music. Since then it's sold over 35 billion songs. Not too shabby.
MARKET CORNER
Market Snapshot
- The Nasdaq reached another record high on Thursday, fueled by solid earnings reports; the Dow and S&P also ended the day slightly up.
- New GDP numbers and a looming government shutdown will be weighing on investors’ minds this morning.
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Sure, some of the world’s most valuable companies reported earnings yesterday. But, they’re not what we’re excited about today. Well, most excited*. We’ve got all of it covered below. First things first...
...We’re here to talk pizza (...and tacos...and burgers). Domino’s Pizza (+2.54%) reported a massive profit surge of 37.4%, with U.S. same-store sales increasing 14.1%.
Chicago-based GrubHub also reported a massive revenue spike Thursday, which beat analysts’ expectations by $3 million.
It ain’t luck, they’ve got a recipe for success
We’re not talking old-school delivery—no refrigerator menus or loud phone calls here. These are two companies that had the foresight to marry the worlds of tech and food. Yum.
Domino’s pizza tracker and zero-click ordering are favorites of the Brew Crew. (Who wouldn’t want to know exactly when their pizza hit the oven!) Spruced-up restaurants and a watch app don’t hurt, either.
And GrubHub, which owns Seamless, is a pure infrastructure play (that happens to do food). Its software connects hungry diners (you) to restaurants who want to serve them. It was only a matter of time, really. And you know what they say––324,000 orders a day keeps the bears away.
Now, others want to have their cake and eat it too
Americans spend $210 billion at restaurants every year, but delivery only gets $11 billion of that dough. Uber Eats, Amazon, Yelp and countless others are in the delivery race, too. We’ll take whoever can get to our front door the fastest.
Now Hiring: Uber
Huff & co are reportedly interviewing some big names to be CEO Travis Kalanick’s right-hand-(wo)man.
Former Disney COO Thomas Staggs, former Wal-Mart information chief Karenann Terrell and CVS executive VP Helena Foulkes are all said to be considering the role—all of whom have solid resumes organizing large companies in similar roles.
It wouldn’t be Uber’s first time poaching a Fortune 500 exec. Jeff Jones of Target briefly served as president of ride-sharing, but he only lasted six months. As we know, board member Ariana Huffington joined Uber’s search party last month after a series of damning allegations from a former employee about her time at Uber.
Out With the Old, In With the New
We told you we would get to the tech giants. Here are the other important earnings reports from yesterday’s deluge:
- Amazon (+3.88% after hours) continues to crush brick-and-mortar competitors—posting its eighth straight quarter of profits, with help from Web Services.
- Alphabet (+4.00% after hours) also reached a new high after a solid quarterly report, with net profits up 29% over the same period last year. YouTube is killin’ it, apparently.
- Microsoft (-0.45% after hours) didn’t fare as well. The OG software stock tanked after-hours on a less-than-stellar report. Luckily, it’s Amazon competitor Azure, squeaked out some growth.
- Intel (-3.55% after hours) also dropped after hours thanks to disappointing earnings and declining PC sales.
Cash Me on Your iPhone
Apple wants a piece of the payments pie and is said to be developing a Venmo competitor that would let iPhone users send payments to other iPhones.
Apple Pay hasn’t been a huge success, with only 5% of customers actually using the service. Money transfers could be more lucrative, though. PayPal-owned Venmo processed $6.8 billion worth of split tabs and rent payments last quarter alone. That’s a lot of kale salad...
What Else Is Happening…
- Elon Musk’s tunneling machine is here—maybe The Boring Company will actually happen
- Heineken’s new ad blows Pepsi’s flounder out of the water
- Purdue University is buying for-profit Kaplan University with plans to make it public
- Mark Zuckerberg visited a Ford plant yesterday—is Facebook entering the self-driving race too? (Probably not)
Economic Calendar
- Monday: Halliburton (+), T-Mobile (+) Earnings
- Tuesday: 3M (+), AT&T (+/-), Chipotle (+), Coca-Cola (-), JetBlue (+), Lockheed Martin (+/-), McDonalds (+), Texas Instruments (+), Xerox (-) Earnings; Consumer Confidence (-), New Home Sales (+)
- Wednesday: Alaska Air (+), Boeing (+), Boston Beer (+), Hershey’s (+), Norfolk Southern (+), PayPal (+), PepsiCo (+), Procter & Gamble (-), Twitter (+) Earnings
- Thursday: Alphabet (+), Amazon (+), American Airlines (+), Comcast (+), Dow Chemical (+), Expedia (+), GoPro (+), Microsoft (+), Southwest Airlines (-), Starbucks (-), Under Armour (+), Union Pacific (+) Earnings; Weekly Jobless Claims (-)
- Friday: Morningstar, Steve Madden Earnings; GDP
WATER COOLER
Kids These Days
Addicted to social media and glued to their phones. Or so we thought.
A new AP survey found that nearly 60% of teens in the U.S. have taken a break from social media. The study asked kids aged 13 to 17 about their online habits. Here’s more:
- First things first: half of the teens that took a break from social media did so involuntarily. #grounded
- Unsurprisingly, 38% said that their parents took their phone or computer away, while the other 17% reported that they lost or broke their phone or computer.
- Another 38% of teens took breaks from social media voluntarily, saying that it was in the way of work or school. 25% were sick of "the conflict and drama" (we don’t blame them).
THE BREAKROOM
Interview Question of the Day
What is the difference between enterprise value and equity value? (Answer)
Startup of the Day
Hollywood makes it seem like tracking someone’s cellphone is easy—and accurate. But, in reality, current technology isn’t actually that precise, which results in about 10,000 deaths each year.
Three former FCC executives have invested in RapidSOS, a startup aiming to fix this problem. So far, they have pulled together $14 million for better emergency location technology.
Stat of the Day
$55,000: the price of one metric ton of cobalt. Used in batteries, the precious metal’s value has skyrocketed 70% this year as demand for electric vehicles grows.
