Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?

0:00Hey, business owners. We know you know the importance of maximizing every dollar. With the Delta Sky Miles Reserve Business American Express card, you can make your expenses work just as hard as you. From afternoon coffee runs to stocking office supplies and even team dinners, you can earn miles on all your business expenses. Plus, you can earn 125 ,000 bonus miles for a limited time through October 29th. The Delta Sky Miles Reserve Business Card. If you travel, you know. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Offer ends October 29th, 2025. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman.

0:34And I'm Toby Howell. Today, sales of the Bible are skyrocketing this year. Why is everyone curling up with two Corinthians? Then TikTok shop had a Black Friday to remember. Is it actually a threat to dethrone Amazon? It's Tuesday, December 3rd. Let's ride.

0:54Hope you all are back in the swing of things at work after your time off. No worries if not, though. It's only Tuesday. If you feel like you forgot how to use a mouse, though, So luckily for you, we have a work-life-themed episode coming up soon that we need your help for. Your favorite super sub, Kyle, and the co-host of his podcast, Kayla, are hopping on MBD to talk about the hottest workplace trends they've identified on their show, per my last email. One segment their listeners love is called Am I the A-Hole, where people submit workplace questions for them to break down. If you've ever left a meeting and thought to yourself, did he just say that?

1:31or maybe you've had a tense one-on-one with your boss that made a promotion feel even further away. Those are perfect fodder for the Am I in a Hole segment. So our request to you, email morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com with your workplace horror stories or questions and the Per My Last email crew along with us is going to help you make sense of them. Drop us some tea at morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com and we'll anonymously help you work through your workplace conundrums and questions. That's Morning Brew Daily at MorningBrew.com. Now a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Neil, some of our listeners don't know this, but we actually have a YouTube version of the podcast where you can come see our smiling faces every morning.

2:13But MBD is not the only one with a video feed. Yahoo Finance also has a video tab you should check out. You can watch their morning shows like The Morning Brief or Opening Pid or get deeper in the weeds with specific investing-related insights. It's a really good change of pace if you want to catch up on some market news without having to actually sit down and read the headlines. And rumor has it that hair and makeup actually shows up for Yahoo Finance's video team, so it's got that going for it. If you want to see what sort of multimedia Yahoo Finance has to offer, just head to yahoofinance.com and click on the videos tab.

2:49When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger was brought in three years ago to restore the struggling chipmaker to its former glory. But like Aaron Rodgers with the Jets, his veteran savvy didn't quite translate.

3:27Gelsinger retired as CEO yesterday after failing to see his turnaround plan through, leaving Intel in perhaps worse shape than when he began. By all accounts, this was a either you quit or we fire you situation. According to Bloomberg, Gelsinger was hauled in before the board last week to describe how he was planning to narrow the gap with NVIDIA, the chipmaker that sprinted past Intel in the past several years. They apparently didn't like what they heard and gave Gelsinger the choice of retiring or being removed. Investors that have been beaten down by Intel's cratering share price were happy about the move.

4:01They sent Intel stock up about 4 % on the day, showing how they lost confidence in Gelsinger. Still, the company has lost about half of its value this year, and it's lost all of its reputation as America's chip-making champion on the world stage. So, Neil, what went so wrong here, and was it entirely on Gelsinger? Look, he definitely inherited a company that was already feeling a bit creaky, way behind the eight ball. And that was due to decisions made by his predecessors that proved disastrous in hindsight. And one of those moves back in 2005, Intel turned down an opportunity to make the processor for the iPhone.

4:39So Intel was a PC chip making giant. They dominated the market for PC computer processors. And they had this opportunity to make the processor for the iPhone, and they turned it down thinking that mobile phones just wouldn't be a big market. And now they are cut off from that market, and obviously it is massive now. So that was one mistake. And the other mistake, also in 2005, the CEO at the time was thinking about buying NVIDIA for about$20 billion. dollars you know in hindsight that was a bad move because currently nvidia is worth 3.3 trillion dollars and is way more valuable than intel thanks to its prowess in the ai market so there were two decisions that were made previously before galsinger even got there that said sent intel on the path to decline but he made certain moves and took intel in a direction that clearly didn't work as well yeah it's almost like you have this twin sibling in nvidia that just overshadows you at every turn.

5:37That is part of the reason why Gelsinger's term will not be looked at favorably is that you had NVIDIA become the most valuable company in the world. It's now 33 times larger than Intel's market cap. So that just is always, in comparison, you're always going to look bad. One thing that Gelsinger did try to do is make this very expensive bid, this very, you know, incredibly risky transition of the company's business model. They wanted to be on the level of chip making giants like TSMC and actually fabricate the physical chips themselves. That has been central to, it lined up very well with the Biden administration's agenda as well, though.

6:15They wanted to revitalize American chip manufacturing on American soil. So that was a bet that Gelsinger made. It could still pay off. Like this is a long and lengthy transition. It's a long and expensive process. So maybe down the line, they'll say that Gelsinger actually laid the foundation for this shift. But right now it's not looking too great for Intel, especially when you compare it to its high-flying twin brother, NVIDIA. Yeah, Intel was not prepared for what happened with the AI revolution when ChatGPT was released. And you mentioned expensive. I mean, Intel under Gelsinger has tried to build massive factories.

6:50And when you're trying to make chips, these things are so expensive. He wants to—he's laid the foundation for a$20 billion new factory, whole complex, multiple factories in Ohio. There's also one in Arizona. He wants to build stuff in Europe. So it's been immensely expensive. And he was banking on the Biden administration's Chips Act money to help fund that. And Intel has become the biggest recipient of the Chips Act. The Chips and Science Act was was instituted two years ago and is handing out thirty nine billion dollars to chip makers that are setting up shop in the United States. Intel got eight billion dollars from that.

7:26So it's not, you know, especially great look for the CHIPS Act or the Biden administration to be pouring all this money into a company that has just been behind the curve consistently for the past few decades. All right. So we just talked about Intel, but there's been another big CEO resignation, if you want to call that, in the past few days. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares is stepping down immediately. And this company, I know you guys talked about this on the show a few weeks ago. It makes Jeep and Ram and Dodge and Chrysler, and it has just been absolutely going through it. Q3 sales in the United States were down 20%.

8:04After a record-breaking year in 2023, this company has just not caught up to its rivals. And Tavares, who is one of the biggest names in the auto world, is the victim here. Yeah, definitely not a great year for Stellantis. A lot of their dealerships have been complaining that they're of inventory bloat where these cars are just sitting on the lot. They've kind of made some miscalculations in the North American market. Their cars are a lot more expensive than any of the other car on the market right now. And they also just have some brands that are kind of stalling out a little bit. Yes, Jeep and Ram have had some good sales momentum in recent years.

8:41Jeep is always going to be iconic brand. But Chrysler is another brand that they own. It only has one product on offer right now. the shout out Pacifica minivan owners. And then also Maserati is another one of their brands. It's their luxury brand. They've seen sales plummet 60 % compared to a year ago. So they have sort of these zombie lines that aren't selling very well. And while Tavares was seen as kind of this auto industry kind of whisperer when he brought all these brands together under one brand of Stellantis, now it looks like some of those are just dead weight at this point. If the lines were too long at your local mall and Amazon just ain't hitting like it used to, you might've found yourself perusing TikTok shop this holiday shopping period.

9:23On Black Friday, the social media app turned e-commerce platform did over$100 million in US sales. Success stories from brands poured in thick and fast. Canvas Beauty, a cosmetics company, said it sold over 100 ,000 products, including$2 million worth alone on a single live stream. Those numbers are music to the ears of TikTok, who has been pushing sellers and creators towards the live stream format for 15 months now, trying to recreate the success of live shopping that they've seen over in China. Now, a little perspective is in order here. Overall, Black Friday sales in the US hit just under$11 billion this year, so TikTok is still a small slice of the pumpkin pie.

10:02Gross merchandise volume on the app is expected to double to reach$50 billion this year, but still, small fries compared to Amazon's expected$757 billion haul. But TikTok is also in a race against the clock if it wants to close the gap, as it could get banned as soon as January next year. For now, though, brands are taking every sale they can get. Yeah, I mean, this is a very interesting phenomenon to watch. TikTok launched its shop app or shop tab in 15 months ago. And I'm sure anyone who's gone on TikTok has seen those posts by influencers, There's Hawking products and social commerce is what this entire thing is called, where you shop on social media and you don't ever have to leave the app to buy stuff.

10:49It works really well in China. In China, it accounts for 30 percent of all e-commerce. TikTok is, of course, owned by a Chinese company. Many have tried to make social commerce live streaming work here in the United States, meta among them, and it has just not worked out. It looks, though, like in this particular holiday shopping season, Black Friday, TikTok shop is finally catching on a little bit. You mentioned it's just a rounding error compared to all e-commerce shopping. But as you can see with the Chinese shopping numbers, 30 percent of all e-commerce, the sky is the limit. So if TikTok shop can get more merchants on board, that'll be key.

11:27And people getting accustomed to buying stuff while they're scrolling on TikTok. I mean, the potential here is enormous. Right. Let's talk about that potential. Dunyin, the sister app of TikTok over in China, made over$200 billion during live stream. So clearly the market is there if you can get it, get the format to catch on. And it does look like the one way to imagine TikTok is a Gen Z version of QVC, which is QVC was that program where people just come on and explain products. You could buy them directly by calling a number on your TV screen. Now it's even quicker. You can just press a button within an app.

12:05So technically the groundwork is laid there. It has run into some issues though because part of the reason people don't like it is it's almost an incentivization of the app instead of just scrolling through videos that were served up to you by the algorithm. Now every fourth video, every fifth video is a undercover ad, if you will, these creators hawking a product that maybe you want, maybe you don't want. So it has been a little bit of a curve to get the audience on board with it. But if you can kind of normalize it, yes, obviously the sky's the limit here. Yeah, and it does represent just the fusion of entertainment and shopping.

12:44Anyone who watched the Amazon Black Friday game on Friday, they aired an NFL game for the second time. And that also represents the confluence of entertainment and shopping in a way that I think this world is moving toward. because if you're at Amazon.com, you have to essentially pay people or you pay a toll to get people to come to your website. Meanwhile, TikTok has 170 million users that it is force-feeding content to you and force-feeding shopping to you. So if you're a brand, there's a lot to like about TikTok Shop. One challenge is these products are kind of cheap and they come at extreme discounts.

13:21So if you're a brand that wants to show off quality and craftsmanship, The idea that you would put it on TikTok shop alongside other brands that are very cheap and could break easily and might be scammy is certainly something that's holding them back. That being said, though, brands like Puma, L 'Oreal, Nike and Crocs are selling on there. So clearly they are attracting in those blue or chip, those bigger names. We'll see if it just is a rising tide that becomes a major channel for a lot of these brands or if it's just something that happens over in China but can't quite catch a foothold in the US.

13:55There's no vaping allowed in the Supreme Court building, but vaping was a topic du jour at the highest court in the land yesterday. The justices heard oral arguments in a high-profile case that pits the FDA against two flavored e-cigarette companies whose applications it rejected. At stake is not only whether these products can legally hit the shelves, but also the FDA's broader mandate to regulate tobacco products. So what's going on here? The two e-cig companies, Triton Distribution and VapeStasia, are accusing the FDA of shifting the goalposts in terms of what scientific backing is needed to submit their products for approval.

14:31The companies say the FDA abruptly required them to include long-term studies that show their flavored products would help people stop smoking when compared to tobacco varieties. But since these products haven't been on the market for a long time, there's no way they could provide long-term studies. The companies say this amounts to a blanket ban on flavored vapes. It's true the FDA has been no friend to the flavored vape industry. It's rejected applications for more than 1 million flavored vape products while approving just 34 that have tobacco and menthol flavors. This case could determine whether this multi-billion dollar industry is brought into the mainstream or is kept in a murky regulatory area.

15:10Toby, there are a lot of competing theories here about the role of vapes vis-a-vis smoking. Yeah, I think one of the issues that the FDA really has with these flavored vaping products is that they don't want them to appeal to kids. That is something that they think that they've made very clear because the flavors of these vapes, I just have to read some of that out. Pink Lemonade, Rainbow Road, Jimmy the Juice Man, Peachy Strawberry, Suicide Bunny, Mother's Milk and Cookies. So these are products that the FDA is looking at and saying maybe there's an audience for them in the adult category. But I think if you are looking to attract people with a name like Rainbow Row, you're probably targeting kids.

15:48And that is something the FDA really doesn't like. So they have repeatedly declined to approve these flavored vapes because they don't want to encourage young people to use tobacco products, to use vaping products like that. But the companies are like, hey, FDA, you have got it wrong. These flavored vapes are just out there to help people stop smoking and stop moving the goalposts on us. just we will abide by your rules as long as you make them clear to us. But the FDA can come back and say, hey, vapes are still a pretty new product. It takes time to drop regulations around them. So you can see why everyone is very contentious about this and why it's made it all the way to the Supreme Court at this point.

16:25And meanwhile, vaping has been on a dramatic decline. Back in 2018, when Juul was the hot thing, one in five high school students said that they had used an e-cigarette in the last month. But recently, there's new data that shows that vaping is now at its lowest levels in a decade. And both sides are pointing to that data to support their arguments. The FDA is saying, yeah, our crackdown is working. Like, we stopped these from hitting the market. And now people are doing it less. Meanwhile, the e-cigarette companies are saying, look, this is not a problem. People are using it to get away from smoking tobacco, smoking cigarettes, and they're not being addicted.

17:07So they are both using that pretty astonishing decline in vaping usage to advance their arguments before the Supreme Court. Up next, it's Tuesday, which means it's time for Toby's Trends. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

18:03Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EpGliss. Before starting EpGliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about EpGliss and visit epgliss.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. Tuesday on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozema St. John host the highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea.

18:38This is not Play Play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best idea win! On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC. If you are looking for answers, some people open up Google. Some people look to ChatGPT. but increasingly people are turning to one of the oldest sources of truth in the world, the Bible. And it's the suddenly booming Bible industry that I want to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends. Bible sales are up 22 % this year, according to the book Tracker Sarkana, bucking a trend in the wider book industry where sales are up just 1 % over the same period.

19:18But interestingly enough, demand for Bibles is growing despite religion increasingly taking a backseat in people's lives. Pew found that just over a quarter of adults in the U.S. now consider themselves religiously unaffiliated, up from over 15 % in 2007. Despite that, Bible sales have been steadily rising, jumping from$9.7 million in 2019 to reach$14.2 million last year. So there are two ways industry insiders are looking at this trend. First, Jeff Crosby, president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, said, It all stems from a, quote, desire for assurance that we're going to be okay.

19:56But Mark Bertrand, the founder of a Bible design site, has a more cynical view, saying a lot of smart people are thinking about Bible marketing now, which could be leading to a jump in sales rather than a craving for knowledge of scripture. So, Neil, Bible sales are going up, but the reason might not be so cut and dry. Well, either way, it's definitely a New Testament to the enduring popularity of this book, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The Bible is the best-selling book of all time since it was standardized 1 ,500 years ago. The British and Foreign Bible Society in 2021 said that the total number of Bible copies sold was between five and seven billion copies.

20:37So people have turned to this book time and time again to seek answers, to increase spirituality, for maybe a little light reading. So I don't know which one of the justifications you provided. Perhaps it's a sense of both, but it's clear, at least in terms of the marketing side, there are an exploding amount of ways you can consume the Bible, whether it's in graphic form or in a leather-bound copy, or they have all these different types of assortments now that people can access it that way. Oh, tons of different Bibles are out there. There's one retailer called Faith and Life. It offers more than 270 different versions of the Bible.

21:15They range all the way from a$7.99 pocket-sized New Testament all the way up to that leather-bound book that you described. That's$95. There's audiobooks. There's books bound in goatskin. There's books or Bibles marketed towards teens and early readers. So there's definitely a big marketing boom around Bibles. One aspect of this, too, that we have to talk about is that there's been this collision of TikTok accounts also promoting Bibles. It's almost a cousin to book talk, which we've talked about a lot, where romanticcy books have popped off a little different in terms of content, but a similar mechanism just with different subject matter.

21:52Plus, I think the customization aspect of the modern Bible industry appeals to people. You can see why. I mean, we've talked about Stanley Cup crazes where people want to collect things and adorn them with different things. Similar things are happening in the Bible industry as well. So I think it's a confluence of a lot of factors with a general undertone that, of course, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time. All right, let's sprint to the finish by running down some final headlines. The saga of Elon Musk's$56 billion pay package at Tesla took another dramatic turn yesterday. A judge in Delaware rejected it, again, dealing a fresh blow of uncertainty to the largest compensation plan in corporate America history.

22:32Remember, Musk was awarded this ginormous pay package in 2018, provided Tesla hit aggressive share price goals, which it did. But back in January, Judge Kathleen McCormick of Delaware Court of Chancery threw it out, saying that the board was too friendly with Musk and that shareholders were misled when they originally approved it. Tesla was miffed but said, OK, we'll do another vote to show you that our shareholders do really want this to pay Musk for all the growth we've experienced at the company. So they held a vote over the summer and the pay package passed easily. Still, the judge said not good enough and last night rejected it again.

23:10I tell you someone who is celebrating, though, and that is the lawyers as part of the ruling. McCormick did approve three hundred and forty five million dollars in attorney fees for the lawyers who worked on behalf of Tesla shareholders in order to avoid this pay plan. So Musk is extremely mad because the lawyers that took away his pay package are now getting paid. that being said Elon Musk is doing all right financially he's more than 43 billion dollars richer since Donald Trump won the election in November at today's stock price that 2018 package would have risen to be worth around 101 billion dollars so again you could be upset that you got that taken away from you but he is doing he is the richest man in the world and is doing okay and they I mean yes you can say that but he would they would argue that he should be getting this because it's what the shareholders want.

24:00Now, what happened after this first rejection was Tesla picked up and moved its incorporation out of Delaware, where the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies and businesses anywhere incorporate and move to Texas. So it's likely that Tesla is going to drop a new, very generous pay package in Texas for Musk to stay with the company. And then it'll have to be approved in Texas, but it will be under heavy scrutiny. And it does speak to this larger semi-exodus out of Delaware where companies feel like they are being taken advantage of by activist shareholders. And the Delaware court has been too activist in that regard as well.

24:39Now, here's a headline you probably didn't expect to read in 2024. Enron is back. An ex-account under the handle at Enron posted a weird promotional video yesterday setting off a string of questions. Was the energy company that famously collapsed over two decades ago really staging a modern comeback? Pretty quickly, internet sleuths found out that the answer was likely no. Publicly available documents show that an LLC called The College Company bought the Enron trademark for 275 bucks back in 2020. The co-founder of that company is the same person behind the mock conspiracy theory, birds aren't real.

25:15So what we're dealing with here is likely some sort of publicity stunt. If you go to Enron.com, you'll see a snazzy news site full of smiling faces and corporate platitudes. as well as a timer that shows about six days to go until they have something very special to introduce. But as of now, that something special looks like merch and possibly a crypto token, Neil. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, the timing was not a coincidence. This was 23 years to the day that Enron filed for bankruptcy after one of the largest accounting frauds in corporate history. Initially, it just speaks to the time we're in.