Today’s Topics
3 charts
for you today:
-
Is the box office
back?
The latest data
suggests signs of
life for the big
screen.
-
AMC > GameStop.
Reddit traders are
at it again.
-
Etsy grows up.
Quirky marketplace
Etsy has made a big
acquisition, and
quietly become a
huge company in its
own right.
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Signs of life
During the peak of
COVID-19, the US
box office didn’t
just slow down — it
completely
disappeared. So
it’s somewhat
comforting to see
that on May 28th
A Quiet Place Part
II
, the sequel to the
successful horror
film from 2018,
managed to rack up
almost
$20m
on its opening day,
and more than
$57m
over the course of
the entire Memorial
Day Weekend.
Thanks to data from
Box Office Mojo
we’ve charted the
biggest film at the
box office on every
day since the start
of 2020.
A Quiet Place Part
II
has had the biggest
day (and weekend)
of any film since
the start of the
pandemic, ahead of
Godzilla vs. Kong
, which managed
just shy of $13m on
its biggest day and
way ahead of
Tenet
($5m biggest day)
and
Wonder Woman 1984
($7.5m biggest
day).
To stream, or not
to stream
For the movie
industry, the
success of
A Quiet Place Part
II
will give
confidence that the
cinemagoing public
are keen to get
back in front of
the big screen.
However, it also
raises the question
— particularly for
box office giant
Disney
— about how best to
release movies in a
post-pandemic
world.
Cruella
, which is Disney’s
modern reimagining
of
Cruella de Vil
from
101 Dalmatians
also released last
weekend, managing a
respectable
$26.5m
over the 4 days.
Interestingly,
Cruella was
simultaneously
released on
Disney+
where viewers could
pay a
$30 fee
to watch from the
comfort of their
own home. So far
it’s not obvious
what the right
balance is between
straight-to-streaming,
straight-to-box-office
or some combination
of the two.
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In another time we
could easily have
connected this
chart with the last
one, but this is
2021, and the
surging share price
of AMC Theatres —
the largest cinema
chain in the US —
seems to have
little to do with
the cinema
industry, and a lot
to do with
risk-seeking
internet investors.
Indeed,
AMC
is now up more than
2300%
this year. That is
a bigger rise in
2021 than even
GameStop
experienced, which
was the original
darling of retail
investors on reddit
and other internet
forums.
AMC management have
embraced the chaos.
They’ve been quick
to cash in on the
meteoric surge in
AMC’s share price,
issuing two new
rounds of equity,
raising $587m in a
round
on Thursday
morning. They’ve
even started
offering free
popcorn to
shareholders
, leaning way more
into the joke than
GameStop
management ever
did.
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These cash back
cards might break
the internet
.
That get your
attention? Cool,
we’ll jump right
into it.
Here’s why
these credit cards
are awesome:
-
$200
bonus offer
-
Earn up to
3% cash back
-
No annual fees AND
0% interest
for
15 months
Bottom line: Big
cash back rewards
are waiting.
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This week
Etsy,
the online
marketplace for
homemade and
vintage gifts and
crafts,
acquired
Depop
,
the British social
shopping app, for
$1.6bn
.
Sup, fellow kids
Etsy has managed to
turn a relatively
small e-commerce
platform for
homemade trinkets
and unique gifts
into a
multi-billion
dollar e-commerce
giant, which last
year grew its
revenues
111%
, while making
$350m of net
profit. Fresh off
of that growth bump
from the pandemic,
Etsy
clearly wants to
get a foothold with
the younger
generation — which
is something that
buying Depop gives
them overnight,
considering that
90%
of Depop’s
30 million
strong userbase is
under the
age of 26
.
With Gen Z
consumers more
focused on
sustainability and
the environmental
impact of their
shopping habits,
Etsy is, on the
surface at least, a
good home for
Depop.
Social shopping
Depop’s
user interface and
individual profiles
look remarkably
similar to
Instagram
. Square photos, 3
x 3 grids, follower
counts, double-tap
for likes and many
other features make
Depop
look more like a
social media
platform than a
shopping website.
The best complement
you can pay a
business idea is
that, in hindsight,
it looked so
obvious.
Depop
fits that
description
perfectly. Social
shopping? Duh.
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Data Snacks
1)
United Airlines has
agreed to purchase
15 supersonic
airplanes from Boom
, the well-funded
startup looking to
make supersonic
travel commercial
again. Don’t expect
to be doing
London-New York in
3 hours
for a while though
— even if all goes
well — commercial
flights aren’t
expected to start
until
2029
.
2)
Meditation app
Calm
has
offered to pay the
fines
for any tennis
players that want
to opt out of Grand
Slam media
appearances after
Naomi Osaka
withdrew from the
French Open
tournament.
3)
A piece of orbital
debris was
found to have hit a
robotic arm of the
International Space
Station
earlier this week,
highlighting again
how space is
becoming
surprisingly
cluttered (
data here
).
4)
These
cash back cards
might break the
internet.
$200
bonus offer. Up to
3%
cash back. No
annual fee.
0% interest
for
15 months
.
Learn more today
.**
5)
This year
could be one of the
driest ever in
California
, with officials
warning that the
state’s reservoirs
are
50% lower
than they really
should be for this
time of year.
6) NASA
has announced
2 new missions
to Venus
in a bid to better
understand how
Venus became an
inferno-like planet
when it has many
characteristics
similar to Earth.
**This is a
sponsored snack.
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Thanks for reading.
Have a wonderful
weekend.
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