| TOGETHER WITH |  | | Good morning. You probably thought you were gonna wake up, open your Brew, and read a little ditty about how Dunkaroos are coming back this summer.
Not today. Today we are dropping the hammer. Today we are giving away two MacBook Pro laptops—one to a current Brew reader, and one to someone they refer to the Brew. What's your best chance to win? By making sure all of your friends/Romans/countrymen sign up to this newsletter. Click here to start sharing. | | | |  | NASDAQ | 9,273.40 | + 1.34% | | | | S&P | 3,248.81 | + 0.72% | | | | DJIA | 28,397.92 | + 0.50% | |  | GOLD | 1,581.00 | - 0.43% | | | | 10-YR | 1.523% | + 1.50 bps | | | | OIL | 49.94 | - 3.14% | | | *As of market close | - 2020: The Iowa caucuses were complicated enough...and that was before technical difficulties with an app and the importance of "quality checks" delayed the Democratic results past everyone's bedtime. Cranky news anchors will stay up late again for tonight's State of the Union address.
- Energy: When oil consumption in China was reported to drop by 20% due to the coronavirus outbreak, traders took the hint. Oil prices dipped below $50 as they slog through their worst start to a year in nearly three decades.
- Economy: U.S. factories expanded last month for the first time in half a year.
| |  Tesla | Tesla shares shot up 19.9% yesterday after an analyst said the company's stock was a Musk-have. Argus's Bill Selesky raised his price target to $808, citing revenue growth from the Model S and Model X and fierce demand for the Model 3. The backstory: Tesla's on a run topped only by Jeremy Lin in February 2012. Its share price has skyrocketed over 80% since the beginning of the year and over 200% since October. ...why? Financial markets are mysterious, but it's hard to ignore a wave of good vibes for the electric automaker: - Yesterday, Panasonic said Tesla's production surge helped its battery business become profitable last quarter.
- Baillie Gifford & Co, Tesla's second-largest shareholder after CEO Elon Musk, upped its stake.
- Over the weekend, ARK Investment Management's CEO said Tesla's stock is "incredibly undervalued." How undervalued? She thinks the company will hit $7,000 in 2024.
An interesting subplot: Tesla is a popular stock to "short," or bet against. That's obviously been a losing bet, so some analysts have speculated that Tesla short traders are scrambling to cover (aka liquidate) their positions—a strategy that typically drives the stock price higher. - Despite rumors, experts don't have clear data to show that a "short squeeze," as it's known, is driving the rally.
Micro to macro Whether you think Tesla's stock price will hit $7,000 or go to zero, the company is the clear leader in an increasingly competitive field for electric vehicles. Note Sunday's Super Bowl ads, which treated us to an extra-creamy buffalo chicken dip of new electric vehicle models from legacy carmakers. The star power alone should tell you how seriously these companies view the threat posed by Tesla. - Audi recruited Arya Stark to promote its e-tron Sportback.
- LeBron James lent his voice to GMC's revived electric Hummer truck.
- Ford enlisted Idris Elba (a former night shift worker at one of its plant) to drum up buzz for the electric Mustang SUV.
Bottom line: It's possible to go to "production hell" and back. | |  Sebastian Gollnow/picture alliance via Getty Images | Yesterday, shares in biotech Gilead Sciences rose 5% thanks to news it's running clinical trials with a Chinese medical team for a coronavirus treatment. Gilead developed the drug, remdesivir, during the 2014 Ebola outbreak, though it was later sidelined and hasn't yet received regulatory approval. But if tests go well, China could provide conditional approval. The ugly truth Global disease outbreaks are a huge business opportunity for Big Pharma. Drugmakers including GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Inovio, Moderna, and Novavax are all working on coronavirus treatments. Whoever gets it right first will score a substantial short-term bump as governments pounce faster than a college freshman for Four Loko. Countries will also stockpile vaccines in case of future outbreaks. Big picture: Even if they're put on the fast-track by pharma, governments, and global health organizations, treatments could spend months in development. Getting them to the public could take well over a year. + While we're here: The death toll from the virus reached 425. Here's a useful thread with lots of stats. | |  Francis Scialabba | Drawing a blank? You are in good company. Very few people outside of Mountain View, CA, knew the number before yesterday, when Google parent Alphabet made the surprising decision to disclose the video platform's revenue for the first time. - Here's your answer: YouTube generated $15.1 billion in ad revenue in 2019 and $4.7 billion last quarter. Be honest—is that more or less than you expected?
There were more surprises: The company also gave numbers for its young but growing cloud business, which did $8.9 billion in revenue in 2019. Google's total revenue last quarter was $46.1 billion, short of expectations. It's also missed on operating income ($9.3 billion in Q4) for nine of the last 10 quarters. Zoom out: Because Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page stepped down in December, yesterday was Sundar Pichai's first earnings call as the CEO of both Google and Alphabet. It appears he has a few growth stains not even flashy YouTube numbers can cover up. | |  Francis Scialabba | On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it's suing to block Edgewell Personal Care's $1.4 billion acquisition of direct-to-consumer (D2C) razor brand Harry's. - Never heard of Edgewell? The consumer goods company spun out of Energizer Holdings in 2015 and owns Schick and Wilkinson Sword razors.
When your flagship product is nearly a century old and more readily associated with preteen razor burn than a smooth e-commerce shave, razor revenue and profit will fall five years running. Even Edgewell's CEO acknowledges Schick has "gotten a little boring." So last May, Edgewell announced it was buying its disruptor to help take on the competition: - Procter & Gamble owns almost every household razor brand, from upstarts like Bevel to heavyweights like Gillette, which dominates almost half the global men's shaving market, per Euromonitor.
- Unilever bought Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion in 2016.
- And now the FTC thinks a Harry's acquisition will send prices back up and competition back down.
Big picture: Emerging D2C brands are disrupting the old guard. But when the disrupted buy up the disruptors, it sometimes creates antitrust concerns. | | | High-achieving, tall building-leaping, aspirational world-beaters: Penn State's Online Graduate Business Degree calls to you. This ad is only for people who work full-time jobs, come home, chef up a nice dinner, and think to themselves, "Time to put my feet up...while I get out my laptop and earn a prestigious grad biz degree online." (If you thought that was gonna be about putting your feet up and bingeing TV, refer to the headline again.) Penn State gives you the prestige of a top-10 ranked business degree, all on your own schedule. Fresh course content that focuses on best practices and hands-on skills will have you maximizing your earning potential, advancing your career, and, in all likelihood, leaping skyscrapers in single bounds. Add one of Penn State's 20+ online business credentials to your résumé. Get the info and get started, you go-getter. | |  Giphy | While that's technically not true for several reasons, Disney did just put a price tag on America's most famous Treasury secretary. The company reportedly paid $75 million for the global theatrical release of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Broadway hit, Hamilton, recorded with the original cast. All you have to do is wait 619 days to be satisfied. | |  Francis Scialabba | Maybe you're the kind of person who holds your plank an extra 15 seconds during 4am HIIT class (showoff). Maybe you need a full day to recover from 20 minutes on the elliptical. Either way, this one likely applies to you: obsessed with tech. The current fixation with new-wave, at-home, tech-enabled fitness is changing the way we define success, both in terms of personal health goals and happy business endings (IPOs). This week on Morning Brew's Business Casual podcast, we talk to the CEO of one of the most exciting startups in the industry, Mirror's Brynn Putnam. Brynn explains… - What works about the at-home fitness business model
- How good tech and smart engineering can scale the unscalable
- Why every company is fighting for a tech valuation, even if it doesn't deserve one
One parting idea: Putnam thinks in-home fitness streaming devices can become the next iPhone. Do you? Listen to the episode and decide for yourself: Apple / Spotify / everywhere else | |  Giphy | Today, we're giving away two brand new MacBook Pros with the works. Whether you think the world is slowly switching to emoji-speak or you just can't get the Cheetos dust off your keyboard, now's your chance to get a new laptop for free by sharing the Brew. How it works: Each time you refer a friend, family member, or coworker to Morning Brew today, you'll get a ticket entered into a raffle for one of two MacBook Pros. 1 referral = 1 ticket. - If you win a computer, we'll select someone you referred to win one, too.
What to do next: Click the big blue button below and start sharing your unique referral code with literally everyone you know. The more people who sign up using your link, the better your odds. Share to WinOr copy & paste your referral link to others:
morningbrew.com/daily/r/?kid=5e25388f | | - Jeff Bezos is being sued for defamation by his girlfriend's brother, Michael Sanchez.
- Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host, revealed he has advanced lung cancer.
- Citigroup has suspended a senior bond trader in London for allegedly stealing food from the office cafeteria.
- Forever 21 agreed to sell its business to a pair of mall owners and Authentic Brands for $81 million.
| | SPONSORED BY CHRISTOPHER CLOOS |  | These glasses have the world's best hinge game. Most glasses crafters use barrel hinges, stiff sons of guns that only move 90 degrees; Christopher Cloos makes their polarized and blue light frames with spring hinges, which extend past 90 degrees to accommodate the large noggined big-brained among us. Take 20% off your Cloos frames with the code "TMB20" at checkout. | | - Tech tip Tuesday: If you really want to mess with Google Maps, you can. One artist shows how.
- Has nothing to do with tech: A hair-freezing competition in Canada is now accepting selfies through March 8. See your competition.
| | | This is a very detailed image of an object you see most days. What's the object? 
Keep scrolling for the answer. | | | This is the highest-resolution image of the sun's surface ever taken. Those cell-looking blobs are each about the size of Texas. Photo credit: NSO/AURA/NSF
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