Tesla Fires Supercharger Team & Can AI Save the Fast-Food Industry?

0:00Tonight on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozma 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. This 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 I do win! On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere tonight on NBC. Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Starbucks got slammed on the market.

0:38Why does its stock taste so burnt? Then things are getting a lot more competitive in corporate America because LinkedIn is launching games. It's Thursday, May 2nd. Let's ride.

0:54Neil, I think it's time for another mug plug. In case you missed it yesterday, we launched a Morning Brew Daily mug. On one side, it has our beautiful logo on it. But on the other side, it says, let's ride. Neil, already people are asking for more phrases on more mugs. Let's run it back tomorrow. I wish you all well. I'm Toby Howell. We have a lot of catchphrases. They definitely don't want that one. But you have a lot of catchphrases. It was awesome to see the response from you all yesterday when the mug went live. And the best part is we bought enough inventory this time. So there's still time to get yours.

1:28Toby, you want to share the link or should I? You know what? I'll do it today. Head to shop.morningbrew.com. That's shop.morningbrew.com to get yours today. And now let's take a moment to hear about the bundle of joy that is the Wendy's Cinnabon Pull Apart. Neil, this is joy in a cup. It really is. It's a partnership between Wendy's and Cinnabon, and it involves warm cinnamon sugar roll dough with a dollop of signature cream cheese frosting. But my favorite part is just how easy it is to eat. The pull apart aspect is way underrated. Everyone knows that the best part of a cinnamon roll is the middle.

2:02This is a bunch of middles stuck together. I know why you love that part so much, Toby. Because it's delicious? Well, yes, but you're a middle child. It speaks to you. About time middle children got a little love, right? Youngest, oldest, middle children alike. Head to wendys.com slash morningbrew to try the new Cinnabon pull apart. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EPCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking EPCLIS 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.

3:00Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell 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. Jerome Powell is like that stern dad in the driver's seat on a long road trip. The kids keep asking, are we there yet? And he keeps replying, no, shut up. At the conclusion of its meeting yesterday, the Fed did not change interest rates and signaled they would stay elevated for the foreseeable future since inflation has not yet returned to its target levels.

3:40Powell said recent readings on inflation have come in above expectations and that he would need greater confidence that price growth was moderating before lowering borrowing costs. And it's true. Inflation has remained frustratingly high after falling rapidly during 2023. investors thought that would continue into 2024 and this would be the year the fed goes on a rate cutting rampage but that proved to be a false hope so far in 2024 inflation has stopped falling and leveled off above where the fed wants it to be but at the same time the economy and hiring have stayed remarkably strong defying high interest rates so there's little urgency for the fed to do much of anything except keep a steady hand on the wheel toby what were your takeaways.

4:22My takeaways is you have a lot more contentious road trips than I did. No, shut up. But yes, you're absolutely right. Jerome Powell basically has to just keep regurgitating what he's been saying time after time because not a lot is changing. Businesses continue to hire. Consumers continue to spend. Policymakers are almost looking in the mirror and saying, where the heck did this all go wrong? But the answer is almost staring right back at them because the reason why the economy has remained so resilient is that the people who drive the most spending are the least affected by these higher interest rates.

4:57If you look at older people, boomers, who already locked in very good housing deals on their houses, so they're not as affected by those higher mortgage rates. Also, their wealth has been building because the stock market has remained elevated despite these higher rate environments. So the answer might be looking right back at them, and it's the fact that boomers are still doing fine in this economy. Right. The older Americans who drive much of the spending just aren't impacted by interest rates, and they're sitting on assets that have grown so much in value over the past few years. Stock prices are up 72 % from five years ago.

5:30Home values are up 58 % from the end of 2018 through 2023. Americans' household wealth has grown from$98 trillion at the end of 2018 to, five years later,$147 trillion. Meanwhile, 60 % of homeowners are locked into mortgages that are below 4 % and they're above 7 % now. So the people, you know, interest rates are supposed to filter through the economy by raising borrowing costs. But a lot of people who are spending aren't affected, aren't borrowing anything. So they're not affected by interest rates. And that's one reason why inflation has stayed so high, because people just keep spending on leisure, on travel, on discretionary items.

6:08That being said, on the other side of the coin, Some people are feeling the cuts. Some of those indicators are credit card rates have skyrocketed. Delinquencies on auto loans are rising. So that does suggest that people with lower incomes are struggling under the weight. But again, these people with higher incomes on the higher end of the income spectrum who have assets to their name are not as affected. And yeah, it turns out it's just really hard to bring down the price of goods and services when a lot of buyers just don't really care about the price. Another unusual aspect of this specific higher interest rate cycle is that unemployment really hasn't budged.

6:46And that's usually something that you see happen when you raise interest rates. You see the unemployment jump a little bit. But job openings have come down a little bit. But hiring is still very strong. Joblessness is still very low. And as a result, lower income people who usually are vulnerable to job losses also aren't – they are still working. They're still earning money, which has led to this hotter overall economy. And it's such a it's such a fine line because you don't want to send a lot of people into unemployment. But Jerome Powell is desperately trying to cool down the economy. And that's usually a byproduct that you see for this.

7:18But it's not happening this time around. Yeah. If you check your portfolio this morning, you'll find that it actually went up yesterday. The stock market, the S &P went up one percent. And that is because Jerome Powell took off the table the possibility of an interest rate hike. There were warnings and rumors going around that the next Fed action would not be a cut. But because everything has stayed so strong, inflation has been so high that the Fed might raise interest rates. He said that that wasn't going to happen. So investors responded pretty positively to that. Interest rates aren't the only economic indicator that show the health of consumers and the economy.

7:52Fast food earnings also act as a sort of tea leaves for us to read and divine how people are feeling. And fast food earnings are telling us that consumers just ain't spending like they used to. Execs at McDonald's, Starbucks, Domino's, Burger King's parent company all echoed similar sentiments that essentially boil down to U.S. consumers are becoming a lot more prudent with their spend. Starbucks is perhaps the best example of this. It had its first quarterly sales decline since a pandemic impacted 2020, something its CEO attributed to a more cautious consumer. McDonald's said essentially the same thing with its CFO echoing.

8:28the consumer is price wary to explain its smaller year-over-year increase in same-store sales in the first quarter. Restaurant brand International CEO, which owns Burger King and Popeyes, also said on its earnings call that we've seen consumers become a bit more sensitive to price. Neil, it feels like if you pulled a parent trap and switched fast food executives, they all could have pulled off each other's earnings calls. They're all saying the same thing. Consumers are price conscious right now and pulling back on spending. Right. It appears there is a bifurcation from what we just talked about in the first story.

9:00We said higher income, older Americans are spending generously. They're sprinkling their money around. But because of higher interest rates and inflation, middle income and lower income people are definitely being more wary about spending at fast food places. They are taking their money from restaurants and going to grocery stores. and what fast food CEOs are saying across the board is that we need to focus on affordability and places like McDonald's, their prices skyrocketed in price to the point where there was a$16 or$17 Big Mac meal going around in Connecticut and that just can't happen. You lose your complete value proposition there if you're McDonald's and you're selling something for$17,$18 and meanwhile somebody like Chipotle can undercut you with$13 burrito.

9:44So the number one thing that all of these execs are working on is value and promotions and figuring out ways to get people back in there. Starbucks is also just kind of a litmus test for the current environment right now. They said they were having trouble luring those occasional shoppers in, people maybe like you and me who don't get our Starbucks drink every there, every morning, but might go in if we see a deal or a promotion that we like. So they're going ham on launching a lot of new products. They have plans for a boba-like tea drink, a zero to low-calorie energy drink, which had a lot of people rolling their eyes because what is coffee if not for a zero-calorie, a low-calorie energy drink?

10:26But yeah, it just goes to show that they are trying to re-entice customers because some of the sheen has worn off Starbucks a little bit. There's like they're not the best coffee. They're kind of in this messy middle right now. There's so many locations, as we often say. So yeah, they're trying to figure out how to lure those occasional consumers back through the doors. There is one fast food restaurant that is bucking this trend completely. And that is, I wonder if anyone can guess what it's going to be, Wingstop. Wingstop sales were up 21.6 % last quarter. And its stock is skyrocketing 90 % over the past year.

11:02So a place like Wingstop, for some reason, maybe we can venture a few guesses, is actually lapping the competition and defying the overall stagnation of this sector. I think they do kind of slot into it's both good value and it feels like an indulgent quality meal. Like it does have that quality threshold that, I don't know, that it feels like you're not just eating fully, I don't want to say junk food or anything like that. But yeah, it does slot in very nicely into both quality. It has quality and value. They also really leaned into the digital side of the business. They have this platform called MyWingStop where you can order.

11:39It wants to digitize 100 % of its transactions. It really wants to lean on the customer data. It gleans from those transactions. And this is just something we've seen across a lot of different brands is how can brands experiment with AI, generative AI? How can they infuse it into, I'm looking at KFC and Pizza Hut. But they have a literal generative AI app that people can ask questions to employees, like how should I set this oven temperature, things like that. So there are levers you can pull on the digital side of things. Sometimes you roll your eyes when you hear a company like Wingstop saying we're fully in on a digital revolution.

12:17But clearly it's been working for them. Up next, in a truly baffling move, Elon Musk decided to abruptly fire the 500-person team running its electric vehicle charging business this week. I say this is baffling because a lack of charging infrastructure is one of the biggest hurdles to widespread EV adoption. Range anxiety is often one of the top reasons people give for why they don't buy an EV. And Tesla's supercharger network has long been something industry bulls point to and say, look, there's more charging stations out there than you think. It's long been one of the biggest selling points for Tesla cars, too.

12:51Recently, virtually every big automaker in the U.S. committed to making their EVs compatible with Tesla's charging technology, creating what is now known as the North American charging standard in the process. And yet, in Musk's version of Zuck's year of efficiency, which is more like a year of insanity, he decided to cut the whole team to save money and also reorient the company around autonomous driving as its North Star. Neil, people were incredulous at this move. What is going through Elon's head right now, if you had to guess? Oh, man, that is that is a very, very tough question. I mean, he did post a tweet saying that Supercharger is not going anywhere.

13:29We're still going to roll it out just at a slower pace. The analysts think that perhaps he's going to disband. He disbanded this team and maybe he's going to reconstitute it, reconstitute it in a leaner, more efficient way and just slow down the buildup. Now, I think when you're looking at Tesla right now, they have a cash crunch a bit. They're not selling as many vehicles as they used to. And they're looking at what they have and saying, OK, we have a little less money to spend on various initiatives. Where are we allocating our money? We have to be very prudent about where we're spending. And they're saying, OK, maybe the charger network just doesn't have so much potential for growth relative to our AI and tech and robo taxi ambitions.

14:06So they're taking some money from from the supercharger group and going into the robo taxi situation. But it is a little baffling still because Supercharger is laying the groundwork for the entire EV industry, not just Tesla, but everyone else. So there are a lot of warning signs here. Yeah, and it's so interesting, too, because Elon has long been a very big Supercharger guy. I mean, it was literally last year he was bragging about plans to open a burger chain at Superchargers, make it a destination that you can relax at and have something to eat. And now he's done a complete 180 on that. I feel like he's in his Henry Ford horse and buggy era.

14:46Remember that famous Henry Ford quote where it's like, if I had asked people what they want, they would have told me they wanted a faster horse. So I think that he's trying to skate where the puck is going with this autonomous vehicle push. And maybe he's looking at his supercharger network and say, this is probably not the priority. This was maybe Tesla's vision a few years ago, but now we have a new vision. So they're reorienting things. But you're right. It is a very baffling move, and it makes you wonder, really, what is Tesla at this point? Because if it's not this great industry force pushing forward this widespread adoption of EVs, then it kind of is a shell of its former self.

15:21So just a lot of confusing questions, especially when it comes down to this decision to just gut the supercharger team. Up next, good Lord, I can hardly contain myself. It's Neil's numbers.

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16:02Raise the rudders. Raise the sails. Raise the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over. Roger. Wait, is that an enterprise sails solution? Reach sails professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started today at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome back to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will cause your brain to melt like a Hershey's kiss in a jeans pocket.

16:42My first number is$43 billion, which is the net worth of Cheng Peng Zhao, the founder of the world's leading crypto exchange, Binance. CZ, as he's commonly known, was sentenced to four months in prison on Tuesday, making him the richest inmate in American history. Last year, CZ pleaded guilty to money laundering violations, admitting that Binance allowed terrorists and other criminal groups to use its platform to raise money outside of the traditional finance system. The sentence means that both CZ and Sam Bakeman-Fried, the two former kingpins of the crypto industry, will now be behind bars. The sentences are wildly different, though, reflecting the differences in their crimes.

17:23Unlike SPF, CZ never used his crypto exchange as his personal piggy bank, and he was remorseful and cooperative with authorities. SBF stole$10 billion in customer funds, resulting in a 25-year prison sentence. And to make matters worse for him, his net worth is zero. So all things considered, CZ is probably happy with this outcome and he remains extremely rich. He remains extremely rich and he probably will get richer while he's behind bars as well because crypto is having a little bit of a bull market moment right now. But you're so right in drawing the comparison to SBF and CZ right now. You just can't have two more different approaches to the allegations levied against them.

18:02Sam Bankman-Fried tried to talk his way out of everything. He was posting on Twitter. He was posting on Substack. He testified at his own trial. CZ, on the other hand, was very kind of cooperative, worked with authorities very closely. And now you have these very easily comparable numbers of their prison sentence times, four months versus 25 years, and their net worths, 43 billion versus zero right now. And these two have always been spoken of together because they were both leading the top crypto exchanges that went haywire in 2021 and 2022. CZ at Binance and SBF at FTX. There's so many freaking letters.

18:41But yeah, so they were always playing off each other. One was trying to one-up another. They always had different approaches. When FTX was first collapsing, CZ offered to buy FTX, but that deal collapsed. So there's always been a bit of a rivalry between them. And now I guess there's a rivalry between who can emerge from jail first. And it looks like CZ is gonna win that one. For my second number, are digital cameras so back? At least in Japan, sales volumes for digital cameras rose 7 % in 2023 from the previous year, their first increase since 2010 when Apple launched its first iPad. I don't need to explain why digital cameras went out of style.

19:19Everyone listening to this probably has a phone with at least five cameras on it. They're really solid cameras and you can share pictures you take nearly instantaneously with a single tap, but people are digging retro these days and maybe the same energy that's fueling the Renaissance in vinyl is also inspiring a revival in cameras that are just cameras. Also helping social media, influencers are applying maximum influence by showing off their sweet looking pictures of exotic locations using their advanced cameras. And to be clear, we're nowhere near peak digital camera. Sales in 2023 came in at 1.2 million units, about 10 % of the peak 14 years ago.

19:56But still, you can't spell comeback without DSLR. Is that true? I'm trying to do the math there. It is not. It is definitely not true there. Yeah, part of the reason why it's so easy to bounce back is if you reach absolutely rock bottom, then the only place to go is up. But I think you're right to compare it to something like vinyl. It does seem like there's these different tech arcs that a piece of technology take. There's the briefly popular, then kind of falls into obscurity category, which are maybe things like sandists, floppy disks, DVDs, CDs even. It doesn't really look like there's going to be any renaissance for those.

20:33But then you have things like vinyl, like digital cameras, like film cameras that do carry a sort of nostalgia that will lead to kind of trend-based and influencer-based adoption cycles. So I was just at a wedding. I saw multiple digital cameras around. It just produces pictures that feel different than what our smartphones. They may not be, quote unquote, better pictures, but they've got a great feel to them. And I've been looking through them like, all right, I'm backing on the digital camera wave. Yeah, it might tie in also to the boom in travel and leisure spending that we've been seeing over the past few years.

21:05People are going to interesting places and they want to capture that moment. And they just feel like, hey, why don't I get like a fancy camera to do that and not rely on my phone? My third number is for all the people, including myself, with myopia or nearsightedness. Our ranks are growing by a lot. Optometry researchers estimate that about 50 % of the global population will need corrective lenses to offset nearsightedness by 2050 if current rates continue up from less than a quarter in 2000. Eyewear companies will see this as a glasses half full situation. After all, spending on corrective lenses, eye tests, and related expenses totaled$7.2 billion a year in the U.S., but it is a major concern for researchers, some of whom view myopia as an epidemic.

21:49So what's causing the rise? If you're thinking it's because we stare at our phones all day, duh, you are somewhat right. Research shows that looking at close objects for many hours is associated with losing your ability to see things far away. It doesn't have to be a phone or a computer. Reading a book at close range is also linked to myopia. On the other hand, getting outside and touching grass is an effective way at keeping nearsightedness at bay. A meta-analysis from 2012 found that the odds of developing myopia dropped by 2 % for each hour spent outside per week. Toby, what's your view? Well, my view is 2020 because I do not have nearsightedness.

22:27But this made me very concerned because what do I do all day? I do all the things that you're not supposed to do. It was interesting, though, that you can reverse or halt the effects of myopia by getting that sunlight. The reason why myopia occurs is your eyes actually grow larger to offset some of the blurring that occurs when you're looking at close things, which then causes it to grow larger again. So it's kind of like this vicious cycle, but you can halt that cycle by just going outside, especially if you're raising young kids right now. Get them outside because you do not want this to start developing early in childhood.

22:59So I learned a lot just by reading all this. I didn't know that eyes got bigger or can get bigger, and that is what's distorting your vision. and I didn't know that Sunlight was such an MVP in kind of preventing these things from happening. All right, Neil had too many numbers this week, so he kindly donated one to me to share with you guys as a bonus Neil's numbers, but since I'm introducing it, I'm calling it Toby's Tallies. And my Toby tally is 92 minutes. That is the perfect movie time, according to a poll of 2 ,000 American audience members from Talker Research. Just over an hour and a half seems to be the sweet spot for people.

23:35with anything longer, really just not jiving with people. Only 15 % want to sit through a movie that is two hours or longer. But maybe people don't actually know what they want because nine out of the 10 highest grossing films of all time have clocked in at over two hours with three Avengers Endgame, Avatar, Way of Water, and Titanic lasting over three hours each. As for movies that are the perfect length, tune in to classics like Dodgeball, Kung Fu Panda, Beetlejuice, Monsters, Inc., and Toy Story 2. Neil, how did I do? good toby's tally oh so good the longest movie i've ever watched in a movie theater was four hours and it was a documentary about a french michelin star restaurant i sat there for four hours i did take a bathroom break but i was thinking to myself this is a long movie first of all but it wasn't terrible so i i understand why people want shorter movies i want shorter movies 92 minutes i would say that's the perfect time it does feel like people are willing to tolerate longer movies and movies have gotten so much longer for whatever reason you can point to maybe it's streaming maybe it's they are spending all this money on special effects they want to you know make it worth it and cram them all in so it does seem like people are perfectly willing to tolerate it but this really came to a head recently with killers of the flower moon by martin scorsese which is almost three and a half hours and some theaters offered bathroom breaks in the middle which got scorsese pretty pissed off and he's like you sit on your couch for five hours watching streaming.