?? Spotify takes Amazon, BeReal isn't Real

Did their?COO's arrest just take a bite out of Beyond Meat’s stock?!

Beyond Meat (BYND) has suspended their COO after he allegedly bit a man's nose during a fight. Back at its height in 2020, BYND was trading near $200 per share but it opened yesterday at around $17.25 per share, and fell to $16.86. And now, the arrest of their COO for allegedly biting someone’s nose at a college football game has added insult to injury.?Read more.

So what??Wacky headlines aside, there's more to the stock's story… Beyond Meat (BYND) has lost 75% of its value in 2022 as meat alternatives continue to cost more than the real thing. Critics blame inflation for Beyond Meat’s fall, but failure to get costs below that of “real” meat has long been a challenge.?

Beyond Meat is produced using pea protein, mung beans and brown rice in temperature-controlled plants. And while the process uses less water and land than beef, it uses a considerable amount of energy and plastic.The average price for ground meat remains under $5 per pound, but Beyond Meat’s equivalent sells for more than $8. So while analysts expect Beyond’s cost to remain higher for at least five years, it appears consumers aren’t willing to wait.

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Stitch Fix’s model ‘does not fit,’ analyst says. Earnings are proof.

Online personal styling company Stitch Fix (SFIX) could be due for a makeover in the wake of worse-than-expected quarterly results.

For its fiscal fourth quarter, Stitch Fix posted a loss of 89 cents a share, wider than estimates for a loss of 63 cents. Sales came in at $481.9 million, below the company’s guidance and under consensus estimates for $488.7 million. Management guided for a quarter-over-quarter decline in net active clients, adding that it expected macroeconomic pressures to continue.?Read more.

So what:?For Piper Sandler analyst Edward Yruma, the results were an indication that the company’s business “model does not fit.”

“We believe that much of SFIX’s issues are tied to a smaller than expected subscription [total addressable market], competitive pressures, as well as execution issues,” he wrote.

“These issues are hard to fix in the near term. In a slowing macroeconomic environment, consumers are likely to cut back on discretionary spending — apparel and personal styling fits well under that category.”

While Wall Street was bearish, investors were surprisingly bullish. The stock rose 9.4% to $5.17 on Wednesday, rallying after premarket losses.?Retail investors pushing for a short squeeze may have impacted the rise. Mentions of Stitch Fix increased by 322% on Stocktwits?and current trading volume is at 10.3m shares, well above the 30-day moving average of daily trading volume of 3.8m. Still, the stock has fallen 72% this year, and has shed nearly 100% since its all-time closing high of $106.41 in January 2021.

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Slack’s new Canvas feature puts a document editor in your chat window. It’s not quite Google Docs, but it’s much more than a messenger.

Slack is becoming a document editor with a new feature called Canvas that will let users create and edit full docs from within Slack.?Read more.

So what:?It’s one of Slack’s biggest announcements in a while and maybe its biggest departure ever from?its email-killer roots.?

At first Nate Botwick, Slack VP of Product, said that Canvas is less a?competitor to Google Docs?and Notion and more a way to find your Google and Notion stuff more easily.

But in the long run, it seems the opposite is true and that Slack is trying to compete with Google Docs and Notion directly.?

“You could do things like work on a newsletter or an organisational announcement and send it out into one channel or many channels,” Botwick said.?

For now, Canvas exists only inside the Slack ecosystem — there’s no public link to a Canvas doc or a way to share it over email — but that’s likely to change over time.

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BeReal experiences a multi-hour outage, refuses to explain

Gen Z’s favorite social app BeReal experienced a lengthy outage yesterday, which the company only acknowledged with a brief?tweet?that said:?“yup, we’re on it.”

Recently BeReal has climbed to the top of the App Store, ousting competitors like Facebook, Instagram and even TikTok from the No 1 spot at times. But the app has also developed a reputation for not being very communicative.?Read more.

So what:?BeReal declined to answer a number of questions related to its outage, including things like what caused it, how widespread it was, and whether the company had a sense of when it would be resolved.

When the outage was resolved hours later, again, they only acknowledged it with?this tweet:?“all good now.”

While the tone is on brand for the app, it looks like the lack of transparency from a company that?ironically?simultaneously pushes its user base of millions to “be real” with one another is starting to wear thin…

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Spotify makes a big bet on audiobooks

Spotify revolutionised how we listen to music. And now, they're turning their attention to books.

Spotify Audiobooks?officially launched in the U.S. yesterday, directly competing with Audible and potentially threatening its dominance in the audiobook industry by offering more than 300,000 titles on a pay-per-book model.?Read more.

Audible, which was acquired by Amazon in 2008, controls?41%?of the US audiobook market and critics say it has a?monopoly?on the industry. But could Spotify’s entry threaten that?

So what: Nir Zicherman, head of audiobooks at Spotify, says he sees the potential to expand the audience for audiobooks and transform how users interact with content.

The audiobook industry is already extremely profitable at?$1.7b, but audiobooks represent less than 7% of the entire book market. With its 188M paying subscribers, adding audiobooks to Spotify doesn’t just make it a convenient all-in-one app for users who don’t want to jump around?— Spotify could become a hub for book recommendations and bonus content (like author-curated playlists) and actually expand the global audiobook audience.

With a reputation for being ruthless, I can't wait to?see how Amazon responds.

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Fact of the week

The NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” debut on Amazon reportedly?triggered record Prime sign-ups for a three-hour period.

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Meme of the week

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