...and Sleep Number's brainy mattresses
| When your Sleep Number Score is worse than your ACT score | |
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Hey Snackers, He's baaaaack: an unidentified man was spotted flying in a jetpack 6,000 feet over the Los Angeles airport... again. Elon? Stocks fell yesterday as new COVID-19 cases hit records in Europe. Paris triggered nightly curfews, and London banned mixing with other households indoors. | |
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Nio stock has surged, but we're more interested in its battery subscription | Red pill or blue pill, Nio?... This six-year-old luxury EV maker is on both. Nio, sometimes called "the Tesla of China," has been on a wild ride this year. Kicking off 2020, Nio had a bad rap as a cash-bleeder: - Red pill: In December 2019, Nio stock had plunged more than 70% since going public in 2018. The company had lost $6B since its launch and was almost out of cash. Now...
- Blue pill: Nio stock has soared ~700% since April 29, when it got a $1B cash injection from Chinese government-backed investors.
- New pill: The stock is up 30% this week thanks to analyst upgrades on "strong order backlogs" and growth momentum.
Not quite Musky... Unlike Tesla, which recently reported four-straight profitable quarters, Nio has never notched a profit. In 2019, it delivered just ~20K cars compared to Tesla's ~367K. But Nio has a cool differentiator: - Battery Swapping: Nio's Battery-as-a-Service lets you swap your EV battery for a freshly charged one at one of its 130+ stations (instead of waiting for it to juice up).
- The subscription costs ~$145/month, but you get $10K off the price of the actual car (since the battery is the most expensive part).
| THE TAKEAWAY | The lifestyle brand factor is a huge part of it... Like Tesla, Nio has built a cult following. Before it ever sold a car, it spent millions on cranking out Nio hats and merch. It also created "Nio Houses," sleek showroom-clubhouses for Nio owners to chill in. Nio and Tesla have both grown by fueling deep brand love. | |
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The power of the pivot: Sleep Number thrives on techy WiFi Smart Beds | Eat, sleep number, repeat... OG mattress company Sleep Number just woke from a deep slumber. Sleep's quarterly profit nearly doubled from last year, and sales popped 12% as we all worked from bed. The stock soared yesterday on the news. But this is really a Health & Wellness story... - If you can track it, you can techify it. Sleep Number shifted to selling only snooze-tracking Smart Beds in 2018 and has been making a wellness play since.
- Sounds familiar. D2C mattress company Casper called sleep the "3rd pillar of wellness" after nutrition and fitness.
- The OG is beating the newbie. Sleep Number is way ahead of millennial-friendly Casper on snooze-tech, and its stock is beating Casper's this year, too.
"Life-changing"... How Sleep's CEO describes the 360 Smart Beds. She says they've "improved nearly 13 million lives and counting" (that's deep). These beds make sure your Zzzs get on the WiFi: - Tracking: The bed tracks your heart rate, breathing, and sleep/wake cycles, stalking your every movement.
- Temperature control: The bed creates your "personal microclimate," balancing surface temp while warming your feet.
- SleepIQ Score: You get a SleepIQ score along with a monthly in-app wellness report (70 to 100 = siesta master).
| THE TAKEAWAY | Sleep Number embodies the Power of the Pivot... After going full-smart-bed in 2018, Sleep Number completed its transformation from declining old mattress company to techy growing "wellness" company. That's helped it notch double-digit demand growth for the past three years. | |
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What else we're Snackin' | - K-popped: Shares of Big Hit, the management group behind boy band phenom BTS, popped on their first day of trading in South Korea.
- Invested: Goldman Sachs' profit nearly doubled from last year thanks to strong bond-trading results.
- Snaptok: Snapchat releases a TikTok-rivaling feature called "Sounds on Snapchat" (great name) that lets you add millions of songs to videos.
- Fam: Tesla says it will begin production of its 7-seater Model Y in November, with deliveries set for December.
- Swiped: Payment processor Stripe drops over $200M on Nigerian startup Paystack to expand its biz to the high-growth African market.
- Cruise: GM's autonomous driving unit Cruise plans to test unmanned self-driving cars this year in SF.
🍪 Thanks for Snacking with us! Want to share the Snacks? Invite your friends to sign up here. |
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The Snacks Daily Podcast | Twitter and Facebook limited distribution of an article based on unverified emails about Biden's alleged tie-up with Ukraine. Now Twitter will likely get subpoenaed by the Senate. Election intensity is accelerating Big Tech's collision with lawmakers.Tune into our snackable 15-minute pod to hear why Facebook and Twitter are acting like newspapers instead of telephone lines. | | | |
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Friday | Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Snap and Tesla ID: 1371064 |
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