🤫 Amazon stole Trader Joes product secrets

Yesterday’s market performance 🏆️ 

S&P 500: -0.22% 📉
Nasdaq: -0.52% 📉
Dow 30: +0.06 📈
Russell 2000: -0.26% 📉

TOP STORY
🤫 Amazon is caught stealing Trader Joe’s trade secrets from ex-employee

In 2016, Amazon launched a private-label brand, ‘Wickedly Prime,’ to compete with Trader Joe's extensive selection of snacks.

In order to give Wickedly Prime a leg up, Amazon hired a former senior manager from Trader Joe's snack division to help with product development.

Cheeky, very cheeky.

Soon after hiring this snacking savant, Amazon pressured the ex-Trader Joe's employee to give up data on Trader Joe's 200 best-selling snacks, including the margins and distributors for each product. 

Surprise, surprise…

After six months of badgering and hounding, the employee finally gave up the requested data.

• The “badgers” then distributed the data among their team before eventually being reported to the legal department for, you guessed it, harassment.

• While Amazon may come off as a big bully (as it should) in this situation, this was—as always—a strategic business move.

• Around this time, Amazon was in talks to acquire Whole Foods, the multi-billion dollar grocery giant.

• So, it makes sense that Amazon wanted to replicate Trader Joe's products and business model.

After all, TJ's is in the "GOAT" tier of grocers— who wouldn’t want to copy their playbook?

AIRLINES
😲 United Airlines has lost over $200 million because of Boeing

Over the past few months, we've witnessed Boeing's unfortunate downfall. From door blowouts to alleged suicides, Boeing has become more dysfunctional than an episode of 'Shameless.'

Amid this onslaught of controversy, Boeing's CEO stepped down, and the company had to ground planes.

Yikes…. And while Boeing seems to be getting the beat down it deserves, the biggest loser in this whole mess might be Boeing's biggest customer, United Airlines ($UAL).

In the first quarter of 2024, United reported losing over $200M after grounding around eighty-six Boeing 737 Max 9s for three weeks following the Alaska Airlines door blowout.

• United depends on Boeing for about 80% of its planes and has more Max 9 jets than any other airline worldwide.

• Not to mention the engines catching on fire and wheels falling off of planes which definitely didn’t help United’s cause.

And that's not all Boeings screwing United with:

• United will now receive only 61 Boeing jets this year, 40 fewer than initially expected.

• United has implemented a hiring freeze for pilots and is requesting voluntary unpaid furloughs due to reduced flight operations.

• The Boeing 737 Max 10 delivery is delayed due to safety concerns. FAA certification is pending, and delivery is not expected until at least 2025.

Regardless, United, get it together; I don't want to have to switch airlines.

ENTERTAINMENT
🔥 Netflix smashes earnings despite password crackdown… A huge subscriber beat

People are finally starting to get their own Netflix accounts, and it’s working out great for the company—they just smashed earnings!

Here are Netflix’s Q1 numbers. 

• Subscriber Additions: 9.3M (vs. 4.8M expected) ✅ 

• Revenue: $9.37B (vs. $9.27B expected) ✅ 

• Earnings: $5.28 per share (vs. $4.52 per share expected) ✅ 

• Free Cash Flow: $2.14B (vs. $1.9B expected) ✅ 

• Q2 Revenue Guidance: $9.49B (vs. $9.51 billion expected) ✅ 

Netflix’s subscriber growth is the highest in a Q1 since 2020, and it surprisingly comes after the company started enforcing its crackdown on password sharing.

It seems that the crackdown has had no impact on the number of people joining Netflix, and contrary to expectations, people are more than willing to stay rather than leave for other streaming services.

In fact, earlier this month, Disney announced that it would also start cracking down on password sharing this summer and plan a full rollout in the fall.

We all knew the crackdown day was inevitable; RIP.

Here’s what else you might’ve missed…

Red Lobster is considering bankruptcy.

The WNBA draft averaged 2.4 million viewers, a 307% increase from last year.

Boston Dynamics reveals brand new humanoid robot, Atlas.

Bill Belichick is joining Peyton Manning’s ‘Omaha Productions.’