Good Morning!

We added a new segment titled “Today’s Challenge” - A specific daily task for readers to accomplish to better themselves and/or those around them. Read to the bottom to find it.

Today’s article is brought to you by: 95% human and 5% AI

Market Update

📈 Stocks barely eked out gains yesterday on the back of strong retail sales data. 

🏪 US Retail sales jumped 3% last month, the largest month-over-month gain in almost two years.

💚 🎥 Media Company Paramount is up 9% after Warren Buffet & Berkshire reported an increased stake in the company.

📉 🛍️ Shopify fell 10% after-hours after providing weaker-than-expected projections for Q1 2023. More below.

Banger Tweet of the Day

Apple products do belong in a museum but man do they love to make things difficult.

Tesla to Start Sharing its Charging Network

What’s Hapennin’: Tesla announced they will finally open parts of their proprietary supercharger network to competitor’s EVs.

The Motivation: The move makes Tesla eligible for a share of the billions of dollars in federal funding going toward building a national network of EV chargers.

Competitive Edge: Tesla has crushed its competition in building out chargers for its customers - a strategic move that often prevents people from getting an EV from someone other than Tesla

The company has over 17,700 fast chargers at over 1,650 locations.

What’s Elon Thinking: Elon must see it as inevitable that the Government will heavily subsidize competitors to help build an open charging network, so is deciding to compromise and capture some of the funding.

Opening the chargers up could also help bring in additional charging revenue & increase other automakers reliance on Tesla. 

Business Bytes

🧑‍⚖️ US Escalates its Investigation into Apple’s Anticompetitive Practices (WSJ)

• The Justice Department is drafting an antitrust complaint against Apple - potentially claiming that Apple abuses its monopoly power over 3rd Party Apps & Developers.

• Some complain Apple tying certain products together with its Operating System creates an unfair advantage for 3rd party competitors.

• Apple claims its combination of hardware and software creates a unique and pleasant experience for consumers.
  

🤖 Google CEO tells employees some of company’s top products ‘were not first to market’ as AI pressure mounts (CNBC)

• Basically, Sundar emailed Googlers and told them to take a chill pill - it’s all good.

• “Some of our most successful products were not first to market. . . They gained momentum because they solved important user needs and were built on deep technical insights.”
  

🚗 Uber and Lyft Claim Big Gains for their Ad Businesses (WSJ)

• Uber just passed a $500 million annual run rate, with over 315,000 unique advertisers having run ads in the fourth quarter. The company is still targeting $1 billion in annual ad revenue by 2024.

• Lyft hasn’t disclosed specifics but noted that their ad revenue increased almost 7 times in Q4 compared to Q3.
  

🐤 Elon says Twitter should be ready for new CEO by end of year (The Verge)

• “I need to stabilize the organization and just make sure it’s in a financially healthy place in that the product roadmap is clearly laid out".

• I actually don’t think anyone would take the job in its current state, so assuming all goes well, end of year does seem reasonable.

Shopify Beats on Q4, Stock Falls

Shopify reported its Q4 results yesterday, beating estimates on both revenue and earnings, and the stock still fell 10% after hours.

The Quarter: On its face, Shopify had a pretty good quarter:

• Shopify brought in $1.7 billion in revenue for the fourth quarter, up 26% YoY and ahead of Wall Street’s expectations.

• $61 billion in gross merchandise volume - total amount of goods purchased through a Shopify site - up 13% YoY, ahead of the Street’s 10% estimate

• “Adjusted Profit” of $0.07/share, ahead of the estimated -$0.01/share

What Happened?: The market is forward-looking, and the market didn’t like Shopify’s forward-looking estimate

• Shopify projected first-quarter revenue to grow in the high teens, below investor expectations of 20%.

• The e-commerce company also said gross margins would be up “slightly” from Q4’s 47.5% print. “Slightly” won’t get them to the Street estimates of 49.5%

The 10% drop shows just how short-term-minded the market can be at times — a slight miss in a single quarter during uncertain times can quickly spook investors out of their positions.

Apple Pushes its Mixed-Reality Headset Launch

Apple announced they will be delaying the launch of their Mixed-Reality headset by 2 months, from April to June.

Why: The company has hit bumps in the road on both the hardware and software side on the way to hitting its very ambitious target. The headset is now expected to be released at their Developer Conference.

Not the first time: It’s rumored the company was planning to launch the project in mid-2022 before being pushed to January 2023, then April . . . now June. I just want to see it.

What Headset: Potentially branded the “Apple Reality Pro”, the mixed-reality headset will offer both AR & VR experiences and will compete directly with the Meta Quest.

The headset is expected to cost ~$3,000, a hefty price tag for a young consumer product. Internally, workers are concerned that the hefty price tag matched with an unproven market will pronounce the product dead on arrival.

Today’s Challenge: Reach out to someone you haven’t talked to in a while - a worker, friend, family, anyone - just check in & say hi. Send us proof if you’re able 😁 

Thank you so much for reading, go out and make today a great one.

Much Love,

Andrew (and AI)