Morning Brew - ☕ Love in the time of AI

How Tupperware is making meme stocks look fresh...
August 05, 2023 View Online | Sign Up | Shop 10% Off

Morning Brew

Pendulum

Good morning. It’s Saturday, so there’s a little more time for breakfast and a little more time to start an argument in your group chat.

Here’s a prompt that combines the two. Rank the following doughy breakfast items in order of delectability: french toast, waffles, crepes, and pancakes.

The best part about this question is there’s no right answer…just wrong answers.

Molly Liebergall, Abby Rubenstein, Cassandra Cassidy, Matty Merritt, Neal Freyman

MARKETS

Nasdaq

13,909.24

S&P

4,478.03

Dow

35,065.62

10-Year

4.046%

Bitcoin

$29,041.45

Amazon

$139.57

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 3:00am ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

  • Markets: Stocks embraced the idea that what goes up must come down yesterday as all three major indexes ticked up in the morning only to fall in the afternoon and finish the week in the red. The back-and-forth reflected a mixed jobs report, which showed jobs being added more slowly but unemployment staying low and wages staying high.
  • Stock spotlight: Amazon had its best day this year after the market digested its blockbuster quarterly results. The company added over $100 billion to its value, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
 

BUSINESS

Not your mother’s meme stock

Tupperware’s stock is rebounding Francis Scialabba

It’s raining Tupperware on the New York Stock Exchange like someone just flung open the kitchen cabinets.

The plastic container brand revealed back in April that it was on the verge of bankruptcy, but the stock still smelled fresh to day traders who sniff out the market’s leftovers. And the traders’ strategy is starting to look more airtight after shares reached a nine-month high yesterday following Tupperware’s announcement of a deal with lenders to restructure its debt and secure $21 million in new financing.

How Tupperware’s value got preserved

After a pandemic-era boom in sales ended, the 77-year-old enabler of we-have-food-at-home families stumbled, and Tupperware Brands was warned in June that the NYSE might delist it because of its low value and sub-$1 stock price.

But last month, penny stock savants started snapping up the company’s shares, BlackRock stepped in as an investment partner. Tupperware’s stock has since soared to around $5—still low, but offering meteoric returns for people who bought in last month at its 61-cent nadir.

But Tupperware might be more than a meme stock. Some analysts say the container company’s rebound looks less like the internet-fueled spike in AMC’s and GameStop’s stocks, and more like another risky recent phenomenon: a bankrupt stock buy-up.

Notable examples include…

  • Transportation company Yellow Corp.: It shut down operations last weekend…and then saw its stock soar by roughly 350% between Monday and Friday amid reports it was working to secure a loan through bankruptcy.
  • Hertz: The rental car company enjoyed a 900% stock rally in the two weeks following its 2020 bankruptcy filing. It emerged from bankruptcy with an unusual deal that paid off its debts and paid out to stockholders.

Looking ahead...for Tupperware to mount a full comeback, it would have to confront the reason its stock (and its sales) started sliding in the first place: increased competition from brands like Pyrex and Rubbermaid.—ML

     

TOGETHER WITH PENDULUM

Fight midday fatigue

Pendulum

The cycles that keep your body running can sometimes get out of whack.

Random sugar cravings and afternoon crashes are just two ways your metabolism can affect your bod. Fortunately, there’s Metabolic Daily from Pendulum.

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Don’t just take our word for it. Ask Pendulum Chief Communications Officer Halle Berry about how Metabolic Daily has made a difference in her body and mind.

Go with your gut. Get 20% off your first month with code MORNINGBREW.

WORLD

Tour de headlines

A mother holding a baby Getty Images

Pill for postpartum depression approved. Yesterday, the FDA signed off on the first pill for postpartum depression, a condition which affects 1 in 8 mothers after giving birth. Sage Therapeutics and Biogen plan to start selling the pill in the US under the brand name Zurzuvae by the end of the year, after the Drug Enforcement Administration completes its review. Sage already has a postpartum depression treatment on the market, but it’s an infusion given continuously over two days, making it much less convenient for parents wrangling newborns than the new pill, which should be taken daily for two weeks.

Carl Icahn suffers on the other side of the activist equation. The legendary investor built his fortune as an activist, pushing companies to change their ways, but now his own investment firm is suffering from a report put out by short-seller Hindenburg Research. Yesterday, feeling the heat from Hindenburg’s claims, Icahn’s firm announced it would halve its quarterly dividend and refocus on the kind of investing that made him famous. The move sent Icahn Enterprises stock plunging yesterday. It closed down 23%, knocking $2.7 billion off Icahn’s personal wealth, per Bloomberg.

Antitrust suit against Google narrowed ahead of upcoming trial. In an important win for Google, a judge tossed some of the claims in a lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice and a group of state attorneys general accusing the search giant of illegally maintaining a monopoly, including the allegation that Google designed its search to disadvantage competitors such as Yelp and Expedia. A trial on the remaining claims in the high-profile case is scheduled to begin on September 12. The government hasn’t had much luck enforcing antitrust claims against Big Tech recently, but the case still poses a potential threat to Google’s core business.

TECH

AI is getting into the dating game

Hands swiping on a phone with binary code where the 0s have been replaced with hearts Illustration: Francis Scialabba, Photo: Issarawat Tattong/Getty Images

Bots are usually the last thing you want to encounter on a dating app while swiping through endless photos of people standing atop mountains, but Tinder is preparing to harness the power of AI for the good of your profile.

The app, which already uses artificial intelligence in its matching algorithms, has started testing new customer-facing tools. One sifts through your photos and selects the best five to display (hopefully with the good sense to avoid the ambiguous group shot), addressing a pain point where many users get flustered when building their profile.

It’s just the beginning of the AI dating revolution. Tinder’s parent company, Match Group, which also owns Hinge and OKCupid, revealed plans in its recent earnings announcement to integrate new AI features across its brands—not just to help build profiles but also to highlight why someone may be a good match.

And the company can’t control whether daters bring AI into the mix themselves: A recent UK study found that over 50% of single men would use chatbots to help chat up potential dates.

Lo-fi alternatives: As dating apps go increasingly high-tech, some singles are turning to more staid Google Docs and creating long-form “date-me docs” to find romance outside the app grind.—AR

     

FROM THE CREW

The Crew

Improving internal morale. When Valimail Chief People and Performance Officer Elaine Mak saw employee engagement was down, she partnered with CFO Ryan McQueeney to align their talent needs and financial goals with the larger organizational strategy. Read more from CFO Brew on how finance leaders can implement this approach to improve employee retention.

SPORTS

A bold strategy to bring you weird sports

ESPN “The Ocho” graphic from Dodgeball Dodgeball/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

ESPN2 is not currently ESPN2: It is ESPN8: The Ocho, and it is hosting a series of competitive activities that are almost sports.

What began in 2017 as ten hours of fun games on TV to fill time—inspired by a running gag in the 2004 critically acclaimed film Dodgeball—is now a 43-hour extravaganza that kicked off Thursday and concludes today. And it has turned into *motions to a grown man playing tag* one of the major sporting events of the season, with roughly half of the games being broadcast live from “Ocho-ville” (Rock Hill, South Carolina) with actual fans in attendance.

How obscure are the games?

If you’re more of a ~football~ fan, there’s still something for you: Slam Ball and Dodgeball have already crowned their champions, but today, the American Ultimate Disc League final is on at 9am ET, and the American Cornhole League Pro Doubles World Championship starts at 12pm ET.—CC

     

GRAB BAG

Key performance indicators

Washington and Oregon mascots Tom Hauck/Getty Images

Stat: The Big Ten Conference will swell to 18 teams next year as part of the ongoing shake-up in college football. Oregon and Washington, charter members of the Pac-12, are ditching the conference for the Big Ten, which is shedding its Midwestern-centric identity. Two other Pac-12 schools, USC and UCLA, are also coming over for the start of the 2024 football season. In this new, continent-spanning Big Ten, Oregon’s travel to road games at Rutgers would only take 30 minutes less than for Boston College to fly to a game in London, per Darren Rovell.

Quote: “I have been working on that grass for two years.”

It looks like Mark Zuckerberg has been following the Silicon Valley playbook of asking for forgiveness rather than permission in his personal life, too. The Facebook founder recently posted screenshots of a text exchange with his wife, Priscilla Chan, where he asked her whether she had seen the MMA octagon he’d installed in their backyard. And unlike the internet, which has been cheering on Zuck’s possible fight with Elon Musk and admiring his efforts to get shredded, she was…not amused. 

Read: Rookie consultants are getting paid $175k a year to watch Netflix. They’re not happy about it. (Wall Street Journal)

NEWS

What else is brewing

  • NASA has reestablished contact with the Voyager 2 after an incorrect command led the spacecraft to stop responding two weeks ago.
  • Twitch streamer Kai Cenat was charged with inciting a riot after an aborted giveaway in New York City turned into mayhem that ended with dozens arrested.
  • A Russian warship appears to have suffered severe damage in an attack by Ukrainian drones. Meanwhile, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was convicted of extremism and had 19 years added to his prison sentence.
  • Simone Biles will compete today in her first competition since the Tokyo Olympics, where she pulled out of several events because of “the twisties.” The GOAT appears to be back in form; she landed the hardest vault in the world during practice yesterday.
  • Mark Margolis, an actor best known for his role as a drug kingpin in Breaking Bad, has died at age 83.

RECS

Saturday To-Do List graphic

Nonagenarian goals: Meet the 93-year-old grandma who visited all 63 national parks.

Snuff film from space: Check out the spectacular images of a dying star captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Today I learned: How “of course” came to mean yes.

Up your brunch game: Here’s a way to get perfect poached eggs every time—you’re on your own for Hollandaise, though.

A winning team: Creating a dream team starts with knowing how to hire the right people, and our Building High Performance Teams sprint can teach you how. Register now.

Zero interest: Rates are sky high right now—so how does a credit card with 0% APR for 21 months sound? We’re thinkin’ amazing. Apply here.*

*This is sponsored advertising content.

GAMES

The puzzle section

Brew crossword: Anyone who’s asked for tech help will feel at home solving today’s crossword puzzle. Play it here.

Open House

Welcome to Open House, the only newsletter section that believes it’s what’s on the inside that counts. We’ll give you a few facts about a listing and you try to guess the price.

Chicago home with a lot of black and white patterned carpet and mirrored designs.Zillow

Today’s home is in Chicago, and from the street, it doesn’t seem like much. But once inside, you are transported into what can only be described as a 2010 prom dress store in a Midwestern mall. The 1,542-square-foot home has so many mirrored accents you’ll never escape your flaws. Amenities include:

  • 2 beds, 2 baths
  • Entrance chandelier
  • “Finished” basement with loose stove

How much for the shiny Logan Square living space?

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AROUND THE BREW

Channel your inner planning whiz

Morning Brew EDU graphic

The Brew’s one-week virtual course Strategic Planning kicks off on August 14. Put together actionable plans for the year ahead. Register now.

Without Kanye and Beyoncé, what’s next for Adidas? Brand experts weigh in on how the brand can pivot after ending the celebrity partnerships.

Office design RTO: HR leaders are flexing their creativity to reconfigure workspaces in ways that bring employees back. Check it out.

ANSWER

$650,000

         

Written by Neal Freyman, Abigail Rubenstein, Cassandra Cassidy, Molly Liebergall, and Matty Merritt

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