Robinhood Snacks - 🍺 Bud's buzz-kill sales

Not a Stella quarter... AB InBev — the owner of beer legends Budweiser, Stella Artois, Becks and Goose Island — announced that its profits plummeted 75% last quarter to $114M. Shares fell over 9% on the buzz-kill earnings from Earth's largest brewer. Here's the biggest drama:

• Classic Americana Budweiser is now losing share in its largest market: The US.
• And sales of labels Budweiser and Bud Light have been hit hardest.

Shoulda gone harder on seltzer... AB's "share of throat" (that's actually what they call it in the beverage biz) has declined significantly as Americans move away from beer to on-trend drinks. Specifically, Bud's admitted that it's getting hit by hard seltzer.

• Seltzer market share has grown over 3X since a year ago, now making up 2.6% of all US alcohol sales.
• Bud tried to get in on the party with Bon & Viv seltzer (acquired in 2016), Natty Light Seltzer (launched in August), and finally Bud Light Seltzer (launched in January).
• But even with Bud Seltzer (and its Post Malone-starring Super Bowl ad), AB was too late — it's still lagging competitors.

Be there or be Square... Not too bad. Square stock jumped 4% yesterday on strong quarterly earnings, which included a 46% jump in sales to $1.3B. Square is Jack Dorsey's mobile payments processing company that makes money in 3 key ways (same Jack as the one running Twitter).

• Seller Ecosystem: You've probably seen Square's sleek tablets at craft coffee shops, or swiped your card through a little white reader plugged into an iPhone at a taco truck. Sellers can easily process transactions, and Square gets a cut of each swipe.
• Square Capital: Offers loans to Square's sellers and small businesses, then collects interest and fees.
• Cash App: Offers peer-to-peer money transfers (like Paypal's Venmo), and collects fees on credit card transactions. It also offers a debit card and launched stock trading in October.

When the underdog comes in clutch... While small business card processing is Square's primary biz, its consumer-facing Cash App has been a star in its earnings:

• Cash App's revenue increased 147% from last year to $361M in the 4th quarter.
• Monthly users doubled from 7M to 15M in 2018, and hit 24M in 2019.
• For reference: In April 2019, Venmo reported having 40M yearly users.

Was expecting something meatier... Beyond Meat's sales tripled for the quarter as it sprints around food shows trying to lock up deals with fast food chains. But investors were disappointed by its losses: the previous quarter, Beyond was profitable — this past quarter, not so much. So the stock got quarter-pounded, falling over 10% on the news.

• Beyond's quarterly loss was $452K. Not bad, considering last year's same-quarter loss was $7.5M.
• Buuuut... investors were looking for a repeat of last quarter's profitability — once you go profitable, unprofitability looks even uglier.

Alt-meat life be like a rollercoaster... Beyond has had some stock trauma since its IPO in May. It nearly quadrupled after going public — then it dropped by half. Still, the IPO was a big, meaty marketing win: Awareness of the Beyond Meat brand has nearly tripled since its IPO. There was also a crazy week of alt-meat packed news leading up to Beyond's recent earnings:

• Starbucks launched Beyond breakfast sandwiches in Canada
• Cargill announced it's making its own plant-based meat
• Disney made Beyond's rival Impossible its official theme park alt-meat