Market summary: 📊
India kicked off the week high, but slammed brakes hard towards the end. US made wild swings through the week, but eventually settled in the green.
US:
S&P 500 - up 0.52%
Nasdaq - up 1.33%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 0.25%
Sensex - down 0.24%
Weekend shot of caffeine ☕
👗 Birla’s D2C ambitions — Birla Fashion wants an ASOS or Zara-like direct reach with consumers — and is planning a web + mobile direct-to-consumer shopping experience, that will pack all of its brands under one roof. Fyi, Birla has been on an acquisition spree for the past few years — picking large stakes in Sabyasachi, Masaba, and other top designer labels. That, combined with its own roster of popular brands from Louis Philippe to Peter England to Reebok India, could work magic.
⚔️ Boardroom theatrics — with Shark-Tank ending, the drama is moving to the boardroom. BharatPe’s investigations have apparently found major irregularities in the Grover family’s conduct running the shop — including problems with hiring, fraudulent transactions, and other corporate misdeeds. Grovers meanwhile are accusing BP’s Board, specifically the current-CEO of setting them up, leading an all out assault against the company’s leadership. Lots of “he said, you said” right now, but the press is involved, lot of mud is being slung, and shit could quickly hit the fan if regulators are dragged in!
No Bezos, no problem. Andy got it 🔥
While our boy Bezos sails around the Caribbean enjoying his retirement, his replacement Andy Jassy has been doing a fine job managing planet-Amazon. Despite lofty expectations, the company delivered a kickass holiday-quarter — landing stock up 17% yesterday!
Quick look at some interesting stats:
Amazon made $137 billion in revenue — up 9.4% compared to same time last year
Profits doubled — to $14.3 billion. Hang on though, more than 80% of those profits came from gains on Amazon’s investment in EV-startup Rivian
Raising prices on Prime in the US by $20. Thanks inflation!
Star of the night was Amazon’s cloud business AWS, which grew at 40% YoY to bring in almost $18 billion in revenues. Also, Amazon Advertising, where they make merchants buy ads for priority placement of product, is a $31 billion/year business. 🤷♀️
Bottomline — AMZN stock added $185 billion+ in market cap yesterday, the highest single day addition in the history of the stock market. Crazy times!
Meanwhile, Snapchat lands on the freaking moon 👏
Zuckerberg had gotten the market scared that engagement and revenues were dying in the digital advertising and social media business. But Snapchat came out with 42%+ growth, $1.3 billion in revenues, 320 million daily active users, and its first profitable quarter ever — suggesting that Facebook’s problems were in fact limited to Facebook!
Snap stock jumped 60% yesterday in a single session!
Jio makes a quick metaverse bet 🤙
What’s poppin’ — Jio wrote a $15 million check to a silicon-valley based deep-tech play called Two Platforms, for a 25% stake in the business.
Two Platforms is run by computer scientist Pranav Mistry, an IIT Bombay and MIT guy who’s been the CEO of Samsung’s R&D unit, and quite vocally at the front of worldwide AI development. The company basically makes intelligent personas to improve the abilities of digital avatars inside immersive universes. Way way early still.
Although Reliance doesn’t have a horse in the Metaverse races, it does have a Jio-Glass project in R&D, and given its exposure to a host of consumer digital services, worthwhile to spend a few mills to stay ahead on the trends. 🤷♀️
And that’s a wrap for today folks! Quick look at major stuff that went down this week…
📈 Facebook got flogged in the street — after engagement stalled and revenue growth slowed due to Apple’s iOS privacy changes, Facebook stock lost nearly 25% of its value in a single day — vaporizing $252 billion in market cap. That would be the biggest single-day market cap decline in the history of the stock market!
🔌 Fisker is bringing its EVs to India — global smartphone manufacturing king Foxconn signed a contract with EV-company Fisker to make their cars here in India. Fisker's first low-priced EV called Pear is set to launch in 2024-25, and will cost around $30K. The company is owned by ex-BMW luxury car designer and billionaire Henrik Fisker, and recently went public on the NYSE.
👏 UBS will buy Wealthfront — Swiss banking giant UBS is paying $1.4 billion to buy the millennial-focused investing platform Wealthfront — which has half a million users, and $25 billion+ in assets under management. UBS is keen on expanding its services to affluent millennials and GenZ, and hopes this deal gets it on a competitive footing with JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs.
💰 We had some eye-popping raises in India, and worldwide —
In fintech, year-old micro-investing platform JarApp raised a $32 million Series A from Tiger Global at a $200 million valuation! Jar reports 4 million users.
Meanwhile around the world, FTX raised another $400 million from Tiger Global and Softbank, at a $32 billion valuation. The crypto exchange founded less than 4 years ago, is now processing ~$14 billion a day, dominating the crypto derivatives market.
🤝 And then some acquisitions in India, and worldwide —
Dr. Reddy is buying a German cannabis manufacturer and distributor Nimbus Health for an undisclosed amount.
SaaS platform Gupshup acquired Knowlarity, which sells voice apps and technology powering support centers, call centers, etc. for $100 million.
And, New York Times (the OG king of the cross-word puzzle) acquired the widely popular game Wordle for $7-$8 million.
👏 Lastly, crypto taxes — India laid out its government spending plan for next year. Among many other surprises, a 30% tax was introduced on all gains made from digital assets and crypto. Painful yes, but the markets cheered the acknowledgement and GOI’s willingness to play ball with the emerging technology.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
You can forward this email or share FC on social media by clicking the button below. Thanks and Ciao! 😀