Pills & thrills
Prescription wars
Good morning, capsule connoisseurs. This is your Stock Market Rundown for December 6th, 2024. Thanks for hanging out with me today. Let’s get into it:
TODAY’S TOP STORY: PILL POWERHOUSE
A few years ago, the only way to buy drugs on the internet was via sketchy Instagram accounts with handles like “KushGod” who would post photos of weed nuggets and accept payment by Venmo. Not exactly the cutting edge of e-commerce.
Now, thanks to the tech bros of Silicon Valley, you can procure a whole medicine cabinet’s worth of drugs online—and it’s all 100% legal.
In 2017, direct-to-consumer e-commerce was the biggest trend in retail, with startups hawking everything from bed sheets to toothpaste. That gave venture capitalist Jack Abraham a billion-dollar idea. Men hate going to the doctor, so why not give them a way to get prescription medications online with a few clicks?
He guessed that a direct-to-consumer business selling generic versions of Viagra and Rogaine would have men rushing to click “Add to Cart”. And he was right: his telemedicine startup for men’s health, Hims, had 500 customer signups within a week of its launch.
After updating its name to Hims & Hers when it added products for the ladies, the business went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021. While its first few years as a public company were flaccid, the stock price firmed up this year when management added weight loss medications to the product catalog.
Amidst a national shortage of GLP-1 drugs, Hims & Hers enjoyed robust demand for its copycat version of Ozempic. (It’s not technically FDA approved, but why worry about the details when you have skinny jeans to fit into?)
But success brings imitators, and now Hims & Hers now has to face the heavyweight champion of online commerce: Amazon. The retail behemoth just announced their telehealth service will start selling erectile dysfunction and hair loss drugs—at lower prices than Hims & Hers.
Between tough competitors elbowing into the market, and GLP-1 drug shortages melting away, Hims & Hers might soon find the only thing slimming down faster than its customers, is its profit margin.
SO WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?
Turns out somebody out there actually benefits from the brutal savagery of nature: home improvement retailers. Home Depot and Lowes both beat quarterly estimates after hurricanes in the US boosted sales of supplies like generators and chainsaws.
Video game maker Roblox has announced it’s restricting minors’ ability to message strangers. When I was young we had “stranger danger” training, but these days kids are just a click away from chatting with basement-dwelling weirdos.
Speaking of kids, a federal court just tossed out dozens of lawsuits against Meta, the owner of Instagram, that claimed social media has “mental health risks” for young people. Here’s a child-rearing technique mom and dad might want to try: confiscate little Johnny’s phone until after he finishes his math homework.
Remember when we were told artificial intelligence would steal everybody’s jobs soon? Now, top AI companies are admitting that current models have hit an IQ ceiling. Okay, I get it, AI can write a beautiful sonnet… let me know when it can clean the leaves out of my gutters.
That’s it for today, homeslices. Crush a few cans for me this weekend, and as always, I look forward to reconvening with you next week. Yours in capitalism, The Axe