Carted away
Will Instacart's IPO deliver?
Good morning, fellow coupon clippers. This is your Stock Market Rundown for August 31st, 2023. Thanks for reading. Let’s get into it:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: BAGGING UP PROFITS 🥖
Slogging to the grocery store for the weekly fridge replenish is a mega hassle. Which is why many urbanites think Instacart is the best thing since sliced sprouted-grain bread.
The app lets customers order stuff from grocery stores and pharmacies, and get it delivered to their front door by a personal shopper. It’s like having your own butler, except instead of wearing a waistcoat and cravat, he’s wearing a nose ring and a Slipknot hoodie.
Now, Instacart is planning to go public, becoming the first big venture-backed tech IPO since December 2021. PepsiCo is getting in on the fun and will invest $175 million in the business. Makes sense: Instacart shoppers often cram their carts with Cheetos, Smartfood, and other PepsiCo products that smell vaguely like sweaty feet.
Founded in 2012, Instacart is now in over five thousand cities, and competes against the grocery-delivery arms of big-tech behemoths like Amazon and Google. Instacart has tech skillz too: its recommendation algorithm suggests complementary grocery items—say, re-upping your peanut butter if you’re buying strawberry jam.
It’s not all smiles and fresh spinach in the grocery delivery game, though. Over the past few years, Instacart cut its internal valuation due to slowing growth and spiking customer acquisition costs.
Prospective customers may be wary of delivery fees and markups. Or of personal shoppers who sometimes provide bizarre substitutions for unavailable items, like kiwis as a stand-in for coconuts. That’d make for a weird Piña Colada.
Instacart’s public debut, coming after such a drought in tech IPOs, will be closely watched as an indicator for the broader industry. Long-term, it’s tough to bet against a business that lets you replenish your Monster Energy Drink supplies without even even having to pause Call of Duty.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Shoplifters stuffing nine irons down their slacks are a problem for Dick’s Sporting Goods, which reported more theft than they expected in the most-recent quarter.
Dating apps like Match and Tinder are introducing “superpremium” tiers that cost as much as $500. If you blow your entire candlelight-dinner budget on app fees, just pivot your next romantic outing to a brisk walk through the park.
The SEC just charged a part-time pretzel vendor for fraudulently depositing $1 million into a brokerage account and buying meme stocks, despite only having nine cents in his bank account. Now he’s barred from trading and lost his job at Auntie Annie’s. Surely there are bigger white-collar criminals to catch than a food-court employee?
A new study found that 12% of Americans eat half of all beef on a given day, with male boomers being the biggest brisket-bingers. Researchers may call these beef lovers gluttons, but to McDonald’s and Burger King, they have another name: heroes.
That’s it for today, folks—see you bright and early tomorrow. Yours in capitalism, The Axe