theStreetFika: Scones, Sips, Strategy & Stocks

There aren't many better times to launch a family-friendly streaming service than 4 months before everyone gets locked inside — and it showed for Disney. After launching in November 2019, Disney+ went on to hit 100 million subscribers in record time. People were watching more content than ever, and Disney felt confident it could raise its targets. It settled on a goal of between 230 million and 260 million subscribers by the end of 2024. After such a fast start, many thought that would be easy for Disney but when it reported its latest earnings Disney said things were slowing down and reported that it added just 2 million new paid customers in its latest quarter. Investors responded by sending Disney's shares down more than 7%. Investors didn't care that Parks swung back into profit or that Disney believes it is still on track to hit 230M to 260M subs by 2025. Many investors worry growth for Disney+ is tapping out. With streaming growth stalling, what can save the day for D

Oh, great, another streaming service. That might have been your reaction to the news that AT&T and Discovery are planning to merge their media assets together, to better take on the streaming giants of Netflix, Disney & Amazon. For the companies involved, this deal makes a lot of sense on paper. Both AT&T and Discovery, the former of which has a sprawling telecoms business, have seen relatively lackluster corporate performance in the last 5 years — which has been reflected in their share prices. This deal hopes to take the underperforming media assets from AT&T, which includes HBO, CNN and the Warner Bros. studio (responsible for Harry Potter and many other titles) and combine it with Discovery's relaxing cooking, home renovation and nature content. Although it may take a while to happen, presumably the plan is to merge the assets under one big streaming brand. That brand would have an ~80 million strong streaming subscriber base, with 15 million coming from Discove

Today, Peloton announced that it's recalling all treadmills and its CEO John Foley finally apologized for not cooperating with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) sooner. Honestly, as an investor, I'm shocked the CEO has not resigned yet because his handling of this crisis has been a disaster. Peloton was the epitome of a Coroneconomy thriver. Its stock ~5X'd in 2020, as its connected home fitness products flew off shelves. It has been trying to expand beyond its spin bikes — so it launched treadmills. Those are causing major problems. In March, Peloton's CEO disclosed that a child had died in an accident involving a Tread+. The CPSC said people should stop using Peloton's Tread+ if small children or pets are at home. The CPSC cited 39 incidents involving a Tread+, including instances of children and pets getting sucked underneath it. So instead of following rule #1 of crisis management, i.e overcorrect, Peloton got defensive - the company called the

China just created its own digital currency: the digital yuan (digi-yuan). It's the first major world economy to launch an e-currency. China isn't just putting cash into a virtual bank account — it's minting cash digitally, turning legal tender into lines of code. For each digi-yuan it issues, it essentially cancels a paper yuan. Unlike a cryptocurrency, digi-yuan is a state-backed currency controlled by China's central bank (like how the US $ is backed by the US gov't and controlled by the Fed). Also, unlike crypto and cash, there's no anonymity with digi-yuan. The Chinese government knows where your yuan has been. Digi-yuan gives China not more money control but also more control over everything. For example, it is testing digi-yuan expiration dates that could encourage people to spend within a certain time frame (to support economic stimulus). China uses hundreds of millions of facial recognition cameras to surveil and fine citizens for things like jaywalking

This week, the SEC announced that Volkswagen is being investigated over its “Voltswagen” April Fools debacle. So what happened? Voltswagen was the actual new name (for about 24 hours) that automotive giant announced for their US subsidiary on March 31st, in a bid to promote the company's renewed focus on electric vehicles and its new all-electric SUV. Initially leaked as an upcoming April Fools joke, the name change was later confirmed on official VW corporate channels, before company spokesman Mark Gillies said on Tuesday that the statement was indeed an early April Fool’s Day joke. For a company found guilty of lying in a big way about emissions (Dieselgate), this was a high-risk gag with poor delivery. Joke or not, VW is very serious about its ambitions for electric vehicles. Last year, between the company's 12+ brands the group delivered around 230,000 all-electric vehicles. That might only be around 2% of Volkswagen Group's total vehicle deliveries, but it is already a

Last week, Apple hosted its first event of the year and unveiled a slate of deliciously colorful products. But the star of the show was ... what we've been hearing rumors about for a very long time. Apple finally unveiled AirTags, little Bluetooth buttons you stick on things like wallets and keys to locate them (yep, just like Tile). They start at $29 each and will be available on April 30. AirTags use Apple's U1 chip — the same one used in iPhone 12. The chip will make AirTags trackers more accurate than those from Tile, Samsung, and Sony. Also AirTags use the "Find My" network, the same one used for Find My iPhone, Friends, etc. "Find My" is a crowdsourced network of hundreds of millions of Apple devices that can help users locate their missing tech through Bluetooth connection.  Bottom line: Apple’s powerful brand is a statement – that's currently limited to Apple devices. But with AirTags, people can slap expensive Apple labels on non-Apple products.

In fintech, Upstart is definitely not a hidden gem; its stock has risen by more than 8x since its IPO in December to hit an all time high at $165. However, among the many companies that have gone public recently or planning to do so, it stands out as one of the very promising ones. Upstart was founded to modernize and personalize the $3.6T consumer loan industry. The current loan approval process is an antiquated, one-size-fits-all process with over 90% of the creditors mainly using a FICO score to asses credit worthiness. This is resulting in less than half of Americans being able to secure affordable loans, although 80% have never defaulted and millions are unfairly rejected or pay far too much interest. Enter Upstart - a leading AI lending platform partnering with banks to expand access to affordable credit. Instead of the thirty criteria that the banks collect to make their decisions, Upstart can take 1600+. Upstart considers more unique and personal variables like education, loan