
Tesla stops making cars? and Starbucks is coming back
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Foreign Brew Daily Show I'm Neal Freyman.
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And I'm Toby Howell.
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Today, Starbucks is finally turning things around.
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Then Tesla's transformation is just beginning. It's Thursday, January 29th. Let's ride.
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The growl just beginning. Canton we have a problem. The Pro Football hall of Fame is facing a crisis of legitimacy after reports revealed that Bill Belichick was not voted in in his first year of eligibility. He needed to get at least 40 votes from a 50 person panel, which means at least 11 voters did not think Belichick was deserving this year. Many fans and players were absolutely stunned by this considering Belichick is widely regarded as one of, if not the greatest NFL coaches of all time, winning six trophies as head coach of the Patriots and two more as a defensive coordinator. No other person in NFL history has more super bowl rings than he does. Toby. What happened here?
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This is like a scanned of all levels story for dudes who still have their TVs on the ground. Multiple explanations, though the spiciest one was that it was a coordinated protest punishing Belichick for his role in some unsavory scandals over the years. The Patriots 2007 spygate controversy. You can toss deflate gate in there too if you want. A more mundane explanation though, is that some voters thought he he'd for sure get in. So they used their votes to prioritize other inductees who might only have one last shot. Regardless, the consensus is that he will get in eventually. He just has to wait a little bit.
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And now a word from our sponsor, Sandals. Toby. Any travel plans?
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Well, my fiance and I.
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Sounds boring. You should go to Sandals Resorts. Kick back on the Caribbean's best beaches. Powder white sand and turquoise waters. With a drink in hand and not a worry on your mind, I have.
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To admit, exploring the Caribbean's most beautiful islands and enjoying globally inspired dining across more than 10 restaurants per resort like the Jerk Shack or Butch's Steakhouse does sound pretty nice.
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There is no better place to experience the Caribbean than at resorts founded by a family from the Caribbean. The winter blue sale is now on so visit sandals.com for the best all inclusive value in the Caribbean. That's Jets Sandals.com Jerome Powell is nearing the end of his time as chair of the Federal Reserve and he is going out with the Opposite of a bang. The Fed delivered pretty much exactly what everyone expected, holding its benchmark interest rates steady, breaking a string of three straight cuts, much like your Thanksgiving table. There were some dissents, though, as has been the norm in the Fed of late. Stephen Mirren and Christopher Waller, two Trump appointees, wanted a fourth straight quarter point cut, but were outvoted 10 to 2. As for Powell's press conference, many were eager to see what he'd have to say about the political maelstrom surrounding him tied to the DOJ investigation into whether he misled Congress about the cost of the Fed's headquarters renovation. But for anyone hoping for something Thai hot, it was one star at best. CNBC counted five separate occasions where Powell delivered variations on I have nothing for you on that. So to questions related to the probe, when asked about who his successor might be come May, Powell responded that he'll stay out of elected politics. Give us something, Jerome. As for the market reaction to the Fed's decisions, there wasn't much of one, which was a good thing because The S&P 500 index touched 7,000 for the first time ever before falling a bit towards the afternoon. Neal, all in all, more entertaining than watching paint dry, but only just, which is sort of a welcome relief given the craziness surrounding the Fed these days.
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Yeah. John Authors at Bloomberg wrote, in the midst of the greatest turmoil for the institution in decades, Jerome Powell and his colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee conjured a truly uninteresting announcement on monetary policy. So mission accomplished. So let's talk about why it was so boring. The Fed has been balancing two different risks in the economy. You have inflation running a little hot over that 2% target, and also employment, the job market that is slowing down. Those two risks suggest that the Fed should do opposite things with interest rates. And if inflation is running hot, you want to keep them high. If unemployment is rising, you want to keep interest rates low. Right now, the Fed appears to see that these risks are actually in balance right now. There's some sort of equilibrium. Both are great. Okay, but not good or great, which means that they're just going to hold steady for the foreseeable future.
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Yeah. So the core question going forward is, when do you resume cutting? Do you resume cutting? And it does look like we probably will get more cuts throughout the year. In December, 12 of 19 officials projected at least one cut this year. But that decision definitely hinges on what shows up first. Is the labor market going to break or is inflation going to fall closer to the 2% target? Neither has necessarily happened so far, which is why we're in this holding pattern right now. So in terms of the economic outlook, that is why we had a boring Fed meeting.
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And whether that interest rate cut happens, it won't be Jerome Powell at the podium talking about it afterward. The race to replace him has been heating up in the past few weeks. There appear to be four finalists on Trump's card right now. One is Kevin Walsh, former Fed governor Christopher Waller, a current Fed governor, Rick Rider, who's a senior executive at BlackRock, and Kevin Hassett, who's at the White House now as Trump's talk top economic adviser. The president said a few weeks ago or even months ago that he settled on a candidate and then he's been waffling over these over the first few weeks of January, the Wall Street Journal reported that he may not in fact have a candidate that fulfills his full desires. He wants someone that will lower interest rates, be completely loyal to him, but will also command respect from the markets as well. None of those four guys I mentioned may be able to check all of those boxes.
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I have a guy in mind. Jerome Powell. Put him back in charge. But yes, you are right, people are trying to make it a little bit more emotional and going like this might be the last time we see are this we're only going to see him a few more times and he's probably not going to ever cut rates again, which is just very funny that people are almost like eulogizing a Fed chair. But Jerome Powell has been at the center of so much controversy of late and there's kind of been the steady hand guiding the ship, guiding Fed independence through this assault and attacks on it, which is why you saw like the memes coming out yesterday. And personally, it's going to be weird to say another name when talking about rates other than Jerome Powell. So I'm just going to say it as many times in this segment. I think I've got like 10 in so far. Let's move on and see what some of the corporate giants who reported earnings yesterday are up to. Up first. Tesla sort of hates making cars these days. Elon Musk officially announced that it's time to say goodbye to the Tesla Model S&X2 of its more expensive models, and say hello to robots. The company is repurposing its Fremont, California factory to manufacture its bipedal Optimus humanoid robots. Once the king of the EV castle, Tesla has fully lost its crown, thanks to rising Chinese competition and a general apathy towards cars in general. Tesla's profit slid 46% year over year, which actually beat expectations. Gains from newer businesses, including energy storage, haven't been enough to counter falling car sales. But again, it doesn't matter if you're elon because his eyes are focused towards the future. With lots of robo taxis driving around and lots of Optimus robots scurrying around too. Neil, Tesla earnings are weird now. This is a $1.3 trillion car company that has no interest in making cars. The stock still rose in after hours trading.
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Yeah, for Tesla investors it's not what have you done for me lately, it's what are you going to do for me next? And what Tesla has done for investors lately is actually cratered its profits. I want to dial down on this because it's truly remarkable. Tesla was one of the most profitable car companies ever in history. In 2024 it had $7.1 billion in profits. Last year that cratered to 3.8 billion in terms of its profit margin. Tesla was heralded for having this insane profit margin for cars, but last year its pre tax profit margin was about 6%, which was less than half as much as Toyota. So costs are rising, sales are falling, but investors don't care because Optimus is coming.
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And by the way, that was those two car models that it sunsetted. They were not contributing much to its car sales either. The far more popular models are the Model 3 and Model Y which accounted for 97% of the company's deliveries last year. So the writing was always on the wall for the S and the X. Up next, Meta shares jumped as much as 10% yesterday as the company forecasted higher income this year even as its spend related to its AI buildout is set to double. Any way you cut it, Matter is spending more money than a spring breaker. With access to dad's credit card, it expects 2026 capital expenditures of between 115 and $135 billion. That is up from $72 billion last year. But it has some money to blow perking up analysts ears when it said it expects first quarter sales, driven by its bulletproof ad business to come in higher than originally estimated. As for the division that its company is, you know, named after Reality Labs, which houses its VR ambitions, generated nearly $1 billion but lost $6 billion in the process. Metta recently laid off more than a thousand of its Reality Lab employees, sifting those resources instead to AI wearable devices like Ray Ban smart glasses. Still, Neil, people were picking up what Metta was putting down.
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Yeah, you must have been clicking on A lot of Instagram ads this, this past quarter because met much money from advertising. It made almost $60 billion last quarter which is a 24% increase year over year. Advertising accounts for 97% of Meta's revenue. It just has this big pot of money that it can dip its into and then play and then spend it on Metaverse or AI, which is doing now and investors are totally, are totally buying it, which is a huge reversal from the last time at a reported earnings because it reported an increase in spending and its stock tanked 14%. Now its stock actually rose 10%. So investors think that there actually could be some revenue at the end of this pot of gold.
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Yeah, Met as earnings basically bought them time for their investment to pay off. That's they're in a holding pattern right now where they're like damn, your core business is sick. It's doing really, really well. Whatever you're doing over here, like we trust you that you'll figure it out because like right now it's just a never ending money pit it looks like, but you got a lot of money to blow. So you are right. They're kind of doing so well that people are willing to overlook all the capital expenditure that they are reporting as well. Moving on. Microsoft was almost a mirror image to Metta. Shares took a beating yesterday, falling 6% after investors digested a mixed quarter. On the plus side, the company made $81.3 billion, up 17% from last year. Profits were up even more, jumping 60% to 38 and a half billion. Its stake in Open Air is also paying dividends with net income increasing by 7.6 billion due to its investment in the company. Now for the bad. Microsoft is paying a lot of money to keep its AI engine running. CapEx hit 37 and a half billion dollars last quarter and roughly 2/3 of that went to what it calls short lived hardware, which has analysts nervous. And its all important cloud unit grew 39% during the quarter, which was slightly down from its previous quarter's growth rate. Neil on the surface, a very solid report for Microsoft. But the combination of some nerviness about its AI spending and investors mulling the risk at other AI models posed to traditional software giants left a dent in its share price.
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It was a pretty gnarly one two punch. You had Microsoft spending surging to a record high, but at the same time its cloud growth was slowing. So those two things kind of spooked investors. We also learned for the first time how much OpenAI contributes to its business. Microsoft said that 45% of, of its $625 billion book of future cloud contracts was from OpenAI. And so you start, I know you're getting a little, little nervous over there because OpenAI is such a huge factor, how much they're paying for compute from these massive hyperscalers like Microsoft. And when investors see that sort of concentration in the customer base, they get a little nervous. Let's zoom out to Microsoft's stock because Microsoft for the past couple of years had been one of the the most valuable companies in the world, if not the. And its stock has actually shrank 6% over the past six months. It's fourth in terms of the biggest market cap companies in the world behind Nvidia, Alphabet and Apple. So for the past half a year, you know, its stock has basically just gone horizontal. And investors are getting a little skeptical maybe of this growth story.
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It was so funny because Metta and Microsoft reported very similar quarters. But the market just absolutely jumped on Microsoft's throat for missing its cloud growth revenue target. Actually, it beat its revenue target by 1%, but it lost to its previous quarter's growth rate by another 1%. So very fine margins that we're talking about and the difference between a 6% drop or a 10% stock run up.
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Moving on Amazon's one day shipping its employees. Yesterday the company announced it would cut around 16,000 corporate workers to reduce layers, increase ownership and remove bureaucracy. It's the second round of layoffs since October when Amazon slashed 14,000 white collar positions. Taken together, these two cuts will lower Amazon's corporate workforce by 10%. CEO Andy Jassy says he's trying to turn Amazon into the world's biggest startup. And to achieve that means removing bloat and changing the culture. In other words, getting rid of managers en masse. Jassy's even set up a no bureaucracy email alias to identify opportunities to cut red tape. It's a rough time to be a manager, not only at Amazon, but across corporate America. Companies are desperate to eliminate the I'm going to need to ask my boss first conversations that slow down the pace of innovation. In just the last year, Microsoft shed thousands of employees to reduce management layers and Nissan, Amtrak and asml, all targeted management with cuts of their own. As for Amazon, it says it's done with layoffs for now, but don't expect it to start backfilling roles anytime soon. In fact, Jassy said that over the long term, Amazon's headcount would only get smaller as AI takes over a lot of Human tasks.
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That was the big kind of absence in this announcement. They did not include any mention of AI replacing workers, which is obviously where a lot of people's minds went to. Is this why you are justifying these layoffs? And that's not the case. They are really trying to say that it is a bureaucratic thing. They're trying to reduce the layers within their company. But you kind of read between the lines here because the day before Pinterest laid off 15% of its staff, they said that the reallocating some of its resources towards AI. Amazon is also we didn't mention it because it didn't report earnings, but is spending a whole lot of money on AI Capex as well. So people are trying to connect the dots here. You know, dot the I and say you are spending money on AI. Is this, are you sure that's not why these workers are being laid off? They kind of held the line and say no, it's for completely different reasons. But you can see why people were kind of connecting the two.
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Yeah, it's another red flag for a job market that has really slowed down a lot lately. Last year was the worst year for hiring outside of recessions and since 2003. And if you get laid off, it's really hard to find a job. In December, the average length of unemployment was almost 25 weeks. In December 2022, the figure was 19 weeks. So it's a tough job job market out there. Amazon says it's trying to find internal roles for the people it's laying off. But it's far from the only company that's now announcing sweeping layoffs as we start 2026.
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All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with some Neil's numbers right after this. Neil, have you heard of Public.com's newly launched generated assets?
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I even made one to respond to all your emails and texts.
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Before we get into Neil's numbers, actually someone get Starbucks an insulated coffee sleeve because it is heating up. The Seattle based company is doing its best Sam Darnold impression and finding a second wind under new management reporting a 4% jump in US same store sales for its best quarter since late 2023. It's the first sign that Star CEO Brian Nichols turnaround plan is paying dividends. We have a plan. We we've been working the plan and the plan is working, nichols said during an investor call. So what is that plan? There's been menu improvements in store operation upgrades and a rollout of a green apron service model that encourages baristas to write on your cups and say hi when you walk in. A big hit has been protein cold foam, which lets you get ripped while taking a sip. But there is also an assist from the time of year. The holiday launch of Bare Rista cups had customers literally fighting each other for a chance to buy, which combined with seasonal beverages, created a measurable spike in foot traffic. Neal the turnaround is slow and lumbering, but the ship looks like it's headed in the right direction.
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Retail is detailed. Toby I've always said it. They've been remodeling stores. They remodeled 200 stores and it's just these little tweaks at the edges that Nickel thinks that they can get back to growth, which they have done. He's trying to achieve this four minute target where you order something and you get it within four minutes. And he said that that's actually been the case now at US company operated stores. Investors hadn't really been convinced about Nichols turnaround since he took over in 2024. The stock was pretty much stagnant, just up 5%. This seems to be like the first quarter where he can point to something real and say look guys, we're turning things around.
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Have you been to a Starbucks of late?
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Of late? Yeah, I think I went a few months ago. I suppose I noticed some changes. My you go a lot.
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I go a lot. An embarrassing AM but I absolutely have noticed changes. Mainly when you walk in the door, every single person or nearly every single person in there goes good morning. Which it almost feels a little eerie at times. But at least they're making the effort and it does their new product line up to it is what I think has investors pretty excited because this investment in protein and this investment in wellness seems to be paying off as well. They definitely want to push themselves as a place that you can dip into for something that will make you feel good but also maybe dip into for an afternoon reset. Protein and fiber drinks coming. They have a little bit more coming in way of their food menu as well. So I think that they saw what was happening in the broader food market and say protein is obviously king right now. What if we brought that into our product suite as well and they say there's still room to run on that because not a lot of people even know that they have these protein drinks and yet they are driving repeat customers. I've had it multiple times like I'm speaking from a place of someone who's tried this protein cold from and it does look like wellness is going to be a key theme going forward.
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Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that you'll want to hang up on the fridge for repeat viewing for my first number. Vermont ski mountains may have plenty of powder, but they're low on Canadians. According to a Bloomberg report, Canadian bookings to American winter resorts plunged about 41% as of Jan. 22, compared to a 5% drop among U.S. customers in a survey of Canadian travel agencies at the end of last year, nearly 8 in 10 said their gross bookings to the US were down from a year earlier. Many Canucks have stayed north of the border since President Trump began antagonizing Canada at the beginning of his term, calling it the 51st state and threatening broad tariffs. As anger has grown toward the administration, some Canadian provinces stopped carrying American liquor and traveled to the US Slowed down. You could say this rivalry got pretty heated. It puts American ski resorts, especially those close to the border, in a financial pickle. Jpeak in Vermont minutes from Canada gets more than half of its profits from border crossers, so you can imagine the alarm when its president, Steve Wright, checked out Canadian renewals for the season this summer and found they'd fallen by 35%, as Bloomberg writes. He frantically called 100 Canadian season passholders and asked why they hadn't re upped, wright said. Quote, many had tears and were choking up over the fact that they just couldn't in good conscience come to the States.
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And there is a direct tie to what is happening in the States too, because some industry watchers have noted that Canadian bookings drop within 48 hours of particularly controversial Trump geopolitical statements. So it definitely is something where they are seeing what our country is saying to them and saying, I don't actually want to go ski. The problem is exacerbated too, by the fact that Canada has really good ski resorts as well. So they don't have to come to Vermont, they don't have to come to the States. So they have options, which is why we have increasingly been seeing Canadians opt for staying home.
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My next number might convince you to go Founder mode in London. The English capital is one of the best places in the world to start a company, the Economist writes. A bona fide founder factory, London has generated more startup unicorns than Berlin, Paris and Tokyo combined, while its venture funding of nearly $18 billion last year places it fourth in the world, only behind area New York and Los Angeles. London has three key attributes that's turned it into a hub of entrepreneurship, according to the Economist. The most important is talent. London attracts smarty pants from all over Europe and the world, and much like Boston in Silicon Valley, its universities are a startup cheat code. 43% of deep tech startups that have raised $10 million since 2010 were spin outs from academia. The next factor is a welcoming culture. In a recent poll, London was ranked the most appealing city in the world to visit, work or live in, and more than half of Britain's fastest growing startups were founded by immigrants. Finally is the aforementioned capital the money is there for founders trying to crack the hardest problems. Toby, this is about as surprising as seeing Arsenal at the top of the table.
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Yeah, shout out London. It is interesting because a lot of venture funding is almost self fulfilling in the sense that you have one successful startup in this neck of the woods that leads to a lot more startups because you have smart people working for a successful company, going and starting their own companies. But also if you have an exit, suddenly those people are flush with cash. They become angel investors in their own right. And then when an American company comes over like OpenAI, who chose London to set up a headquarters over in Europe, same thing for Palantir. You have very smart people from those companies going out and starting their own. So it's a flywheel effect that happens when these dense alumni networks become bigger and bigger. They are going to lead to more startups, which leads to more funding as well.
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For my final number, did you know that barely anyone knows the formula to WD40? Yep, this thing's America's most closely guarded secret outside of the nuclear codes. According to the Wall Street Journal, the handwritten formula for the 70 plus year old lubricant is locked in an undisclosed bank of America vault somewhere in San Diego. And it's only left this vault just three times in the past 30 years. Heck, the CEO of the company who's been there for decades was only allowed gaze upon it 18 months ago. Even then, the process was grueling, requiring several NDAs, weeks of preparation and grabbing the key that's only in the possession of the company's head lawyer. The notebook itself is unremarkable. Allegedly. I've never seen it featuring 40 attempts at the formula, including the 39 concoctions that failed to make the final cut. Execs who have viewed the recipe told the Journal it's a bit underwhelming because not being scientists themselves, they had no idea what they were looking at. When thinking of new products and innovations for WD40, insiders utilize a coated version to maintain secrecy. Toby, a legendary American document held under lock and key. It sounds like a job for Nicolas Cage.
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I find it hilarious that the executives who saw it said, I don't know, I'm not a scientist, I don't know what the heck these words mean. I do find it odd that the head of R and D at WD40 hasn't seen the formula. What are you researching and developing if you don't know what's in the very product that you are working on? And then the other funny anecdote from this is that obviously people have tried to recreate or figure out what is in WD40. Wired actually made an attempt at it a few years ago and people from the company said actually they got a lot of components right, but they said the magic is in how you mix those components and the various nuances they compared it to. You know, Coke contains sugar, caramel, color and water, but you don't know which ratios. Like you can't recreate Coke just from knowing the base rate. So if you are interested, go down the rabbit hole. Wire got pretty close, but no one's making WD40 and I actually think Walter.
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White could probably all right, let's sprint to the finish with our final headline. Virtually all Companies time their IPOs based on things like market conditions and investor appetite, but not those owned by Elon Musk. As Space X gears up for its monster public debut, the biggest in history, Musk wants the IPO to sync up with cosmological patterns. According to The Financial Times, SpaceX is aiming for a mid June IPO because that's when Jupiter and Venus will appear close together, known as a conjunction for the first time in three years. June also happens to be Musk's birthday month, when he'll turn 55. This shouldn't come as a total surprise. Musk has a history of using symbols and memeable numbers for crucial business decisions, like when he claimed he was taking Tesla Private at $420 per share for no other reason than it's a pot joke. Still, it's unclear whether the stars will align for a Space X IPO that soon, considering it would be a very crunch timeline. Toby, this is classic cancer behavior.
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He's an astrology girly. How did we not see this coming? Using the planetary alignment to make a business decision? That is astrology behavior right there. Regardless, he's probably going to be the first astrology girly trillionaire because he's mighty close already with a $778 billion net worth. So toss in a IPO that could be as big as 1 1/2 trillion dollar market cap. Then we're talking about trillionaire astrology girlies.
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Okay, that is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. If you want to get in touch, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at Morning Broadcom or DM us on Instagram @MB Daily show let's roll the credits. Emily Milian is our executive producer. Raymond Lu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake hair and makeup is a first ballot no show hall of Famer Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Great show. Right, Neil? Let's run it back tomorrow, Sam.
Episode Title: Tesla Scraps High-End Car Models & Starbucks is Heating Up
Air Date: January 29, 2026
Hosts: Neal Freyman and Toby Howell
This episode spotlights two major business stories: Tesla's shift away from its high-end car models towards robotics, and Starbucks’ surprising turnaround in sales under new management. Along the way, the Morning Brew Daily hosts deliver quick takes on the Federal Reserve's steady rate decision, major corporate earnings (Meta, Microsoft, Amazon), and an entertaining dose of “Neil’s Numbers,” featuring quirky business trivia and trends. The banter is witty and breezy, aiming to both inform and amuse listeners heading into their day.
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The episode stays true to Morning Brew Daily’s brand: fast-paced, dryly humorous, and relatable for anyone wanting a digest of business news with cultural color. The witty asides (“astrology girly” Elon Musk, “scandal of all levels... for dudes with their TVs on the ground”) keep the conversation lively. Real stories of economic uncertainty and technological disruption are made approachable, engaging, and even fun.
Listeners walk away with: