Hi, we've got 3 charts for you today:
PinPal
PayPal is reportedly looking to acquire Pinterest for a valuation near $45bn in a bid to combine two tech companies that begin with the letter "P".
On the surface, that's about where the similarities or synergies between these two companies stop. PayPal is a payments company and Pinterest is a killer app for making mood boards about your wedding, a renovation you're doing or just stuff-you-kinda-like and might want to buy one day.
But that last piece is exactly what PayPal seems to be interested in. Combining PayPal's payment infrastructure with Pinterest's 400+ million users could - in theory - create a social commerce giant. You pin a few things you like, and voilà, suddenly PayPal makes it easy to purchase those items with a few taps on your phone.
Agree to disagree
Last quarter Pinterest active user numbers actually fell, suggesting the company might have hit its user ceiling. That's been the case for a while in the US, where Pinterest has grown only modestly since 2016, but until very recently, the international growth had been solid — driving total users over 400 million last year.
Pinterest's shares soared 10% on the news while PayPal's fell roughly 5% - which should tell you all you need to know about how the market viewed the idea.
Everything old is new again
It's 2021 and vinyls are outselling CDs.
In the first half of this year more than 17 million vinyl records were sold in the US — nearly double the number for the first six months of 2020. If you didn't know anything about the formats, you'd be forgiven for thinking vinyl records were a new innovative way to listen to music.
But making vinyls remains a long and difficult process, often relying on technology or machines that were pumping out records in the 70s and 80s. Indeed, The New York Times reports this week that production logjams are now common for artists, as vinyl makers rely on decades-old pressing machines.
Put simply, supply can't keep up with demand.
Even Adele, who has a new album coming out, had to set her release date six months in advance, to make sure vinyls would be ready in time.
Nostalgia is big business, but it's not just older listeners who are into vinyls. Popular Gen Z artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish have made vinyls, each respectively selling tens of thousands to their (mostly) younger fanbase.
Will CDs ever become romanticized in the same way vinyl has? What about cassettes?
P.S. Check out our chart of the entire US music industry by format.
Even with a mid-year lull, 2021 has been the year of the SPAC.
According to the latest data, almost 500 companies have chosen to go public in the US this year via a SPAC — a public shell company with a big cheque book that buys private companies. SPACs allow would-be public companies to skip the long roadshows, negotiations and some of the due diligence of a traditional IPO process.
This week two big names of interest joined that increasingly long list: WeWork and the Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG).
WeBack
No company has had a worse traditional IPO experience than WeWork. After filing for an IPO in 2019 controversy after controversy hit the headlines, as investors questioned the company's business model and financial metrics like "community adjusted EBITDA". Founder Adam Neumann got kicked out (with a huge payout). The IPO got canned. Then the pandemic hit.
Given all that happened, it's actually quite remarkable that WeWork is now a public entity of some sort, albeit at a much slimmer $9bn valuation.
Trump Social
The other company of note that merged with a SPAC this week is the Trump Media & Technology Group. TMTG's mission is "to create a rival to the liberal media consortium and fight back against the "Big Tech” companies of Silicon Valley".
Its first focus is likely to be its social network, TRUTH social, but the 22 slides in its investor presentation deck, complete with some 3D charts, reveal some greater ambitions. Those include a streaming platform to rival Netflix and Disney, a news network to take on CNN and potentially a tech product to compete with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Stripe. That's a lot of competition.
1) Crocs continue to crush it. The company now expects to grow its revenue 62-65% this year relative to 2020 (which was a good year itself).
2) A fossil treasure trove in Patagonia shows evidence of complex social herd behavior in dinosaurs more than 190 million years ago, 40 million years earlier than previously thought.
3) Snapchat's share price is down more than 20% in pre-market trading after the company revealed that Apple's privacy changes had materially affected its advertising business.
4) Breathable, moisture-wicking dress shirts that look and feel amazing? 30,000 five-star reviews can't be wrong, check out Mizzen+Main.**
5) "You can't make a Tomelette without breaking some Gregs." Our favorite show Succession is back, and scoring high ratings in its first episode on IMDB (9.3).
6) China's livestreaming "lipstick king", Austin Li Jiaqi, sold more than $1.7bn worth of products in a 12-hour period on Alibaba.
7) Check out the best snaps from the Natural History Museum's wildlife photographer of the year competition.
**This is sponsored content.
