SPACs Attack

Episode Summary:

On the LAST SPACs Attack as we say farewell.

Chris Katje & Money Mitch go into battle once more to find the best SPAC stock out there?

Come join in on the fun and engagement

& Stay tuned for updates on how you can stay with the SPACs Attack trend.

Battles today

FSR vs LCID

NKLA vs RIDE

PLBY vs HIMS

SPCE vs BKSY

DKNG vs RSI

DM vs VELD

Hosts:

Mitch Hoch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/STORYInvestors

Chris Katje

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chriskatje

For FASTER NEWS and IN-DEPTH market data, check out Benzinga Pro. For a free two-week trial go to http://pro.benzinga.com/register

• Listen to SPACs Attack Archive here

• Subscribe to all Benzinga Podcasts here

• Sign up for the SPACs Attacks Newsletter here

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• Become a BENZINGA AFFILIATE and earn 30% on new subscriptions

Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.

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Episode Summary:

On Today SPACs Attack Chris & Money Mitch talk about all the latest SPAC industry top movers.

Interview with VPC Impact Acquisition Holdings III, Inc. merger partner, Dave CEO, Jason Wilk (NYSE: VPCC)

Guests:

Dave CEO, Jason Wilk

https://dave.com/

Hosts:

Mitch Hoch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/STORYInvestors

Chris Katje

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chriskatje

For FASTER NEWS and IN-DEPTH market data, check out Benzinga Pro. For a free two-week trial go to http://pro.benzinga.com/register

• Listen to SPACs Attack Archive here

• Subscribe to all Benzinga Podcasts here

• Sign up for the SPACs Attacks Newsletter here

• Get 20% off Benzinga PRO https://benzinga.grsm.io/youtube20

• Become a BENZINGA AFFILIATE and earn 30% on new subscriptions

Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.

Unedited Transcript:

How we doing traders? Welcome to the one, the only the spacs attack. And yes, we missed yesterday. There was monster moves out there. So we'll talk all about them right here on the specs attack. You guys give us a thumbs up and let's get the show started.

Welcome back traders. Let's go ahead. Let's bring on the brains to the show. Chris catchy. What's going on? Happy Wednesday to you. Yeah, no show yesterday. Benzinga FinTech awards. I know I enjoyed those. A lot of great insight from FinTech companies on what's ahead for retail traders. So definitely enjoyed that.

We got a jam packed show today, though. We got feel announcements today. Yesterday, we got earnings yesterday. Today we got earnings later tonight to talk about, we got a monster move yesterday and we of course have an interview to get into as well. Of course, like always, we're going to get into an interview with Dave banking for humans.

If you want to find out all about Dave, stick around, we'll get into that interview after our headlines. Let's go ahead and knock out some of these headlines. I know there's a lot to talk about Chris. So Chris is going to be going through it. Step-by-step this is where you guys get the information for the day right here on spec tech.

So Chris, take us back to those headlines

All right guys. Yeah, a lot to get to today. We'll try to break it all down for. Starting with rating, uh, upgrades and initiations. We have Fisker FSR credit Suisse, initiating coverage yesterday with an outperform rating and a price target of $32. A nice call out here from credit Suisse. Uh, I am long Fisker again, they have the auto show later this month, so definitely a catalyst to watch.

And then we have skin S K I N the beauty health company, da Davidson maintaining, uh, by raising the price target to $32 company did have earnings last night. I'll get to that in a little bit. D M Y Q, which is merging with play at Northland capital initiating with a price target of $16. This is I think the third analyst now to issue a, a rating on planet pre deal close.

So a definitely an interesting one, again, a Niccolo DiMasi spec that we know well here on the show, but a nice $16 call-out today. And then a couple Eve players, lucid motors, El CID, bank of America, raising the price. From $30 to $60. So $60, the new price target from bank of America in a new, a call-out of EBV names to watch.

And then also a raising the price target of Fisker bank of America. That is from $18 to $24. So two notes on Fisker over the last two days and lucid the $60 price target. Uh, so some nice, uh, analysts notes out there and then turning to our big news yesterday, uh, L a Z R. So this is Lou Minnaar a LIDAR company.

It was announced that they were selected for the Novidium drive Hyperion autonomous vehicle reference platform. So their long range LIDAR solution is part of the best in class sensor suite to help deliver safe, highly assisted and full self-driving capabilities. Um, so again, the video, a leader in the chip space, artificial intelligence software is partnering with Luminar with their LIDAR technology level three highway driving configuration.

This could be a big deal, right? If a lot of companies partner with either Luminar or in a video in the autonomous vehicle space, that's an area that we have talked about a lot here on the show. Um, so L a Z R the big leader yesterday, we'll take a look at that, uh, chart later on today, and then turning to earning so many companies D specs reporting earnings over the last couple of days.

Uh, today we have wheels up ticker UPP, third quarter sales, 302 million up from 194.8 million in the prior year. Then we have V go one of the high flyers earlier this week, uh, Eve go third quarter sales, $6.2 million, speeding a street estimate of 5.4 million, and they see full year revenue hitting a range of 20 to $22 million versus a street estimate of $20.3 million.

One of our big gainers today, stem, uh, energy storage company reporting third quarter sales of $39.8 million. Beating a street estimate of $35.9 million company achieved a record revenue record gross margin record backlog record pipeline, and record assets under management. Their 12 month pipeline. Now $2.4 billion up 41% from the prior quarter.

Um, so that backlog and pipeline looking very strong for stem. Uh, keep an eye out on stem if it's not on your watch list here. And as I said, the beauty health reported earnings, tickers skin S K I N. Uh, they had sales of 68.1 million compared to 34.6 million in the prior year period. They raised their guidance from a previous range of 230 to 240 million for the full year new range.

Now 245 to $255 million company did announce that their C E O uh, Clint Carnell will be stepping down. Um, so that was, uh, reacted to negatively by investors. Last night, we have shares down 9% today. Now still trading at $26. Um, one to keep an eye on and remember that analyst note, raising the price target on the stock money lion, ticker, M.

Reported third quarter sales of 44.2 million beating an estimate of $40.6 million Moneyline and a FinTech play has been trading under $10 since that merger was complete. Um, so maybe earnings can provide a new lift there. Uh, G M I, I Gore's metropolis two, which is merging with sander holdings. Third quarter sales, 67.5 million up 155% year over year.

Also raising full year guidance from a range of 180 to 190 million new estimate, 200 million to 205 million. This is a hospitality reopening play G M I I, the ticker trading at 9 98. Right now offering a nice risk reward here with those strong earnings in that raise guidance. So keep an eye out. G M I, the ATI P one of our big leaders today.

Um, they reported revenue $159 million in the second quarter compared to 164 million, uh, in the previous year. But up from 148.7 million, uh, so something to keep an eye on there. Um, you know, this has been one of the decliners, right? Uh, trading under $4. We are getting a lift now today, though they did see visits per day increase on a year, over year and quarter over quarter basis.

So, uh, one to keep an eye out, uh, but again has been a layered out there. A former spec Metro mile, M I L E is getting bought out by lemonade. So lemonade will acquire a Metro mile in an all stock transaction, $500 million valuation. Uh, so this one's going to get bought out under $5. Um, and remember this was $10 when it went public via SPAC.

Uh, so something to keep an eye out on the air, um, again, a laggard in the industry and for SPACs, um, but could start a trend of companies getting bought out after the DCE back. If they do not trade over that $10 mark, then we also got some mergers terminated. So BBQ guy is terminating their merger with Velo V E L O due to supply chain factors that are affecting the business.

And the timing of the closing of the transaction HCIC merging with plus also terminating their business combination. So two deals terminated this week. We did get a vote date set for SVO K with boxed, uh, December 7th. So we do have a handful of companies already announcing those December dates and then turning into deals yesterday.

We got a deal for hugs, H U G. They are going to help bring Panera public restaurant company, Panera. This is going to be a interesting combination that could see some scrutiny from the sec. Um, so hugs who counts Danny Meyer as their chairman. He's the founder of shake shack. Uh, this pack is going to help bring Panera public via traditional IPO.

So hugs shareholders will be issued Panera common stock at a ratio of $10 divided by the public offering price. Uh, again, we could see some interest from the sec on how this deal is structured, but if it goes through, this is going to be an opportunity for investors to get early access to the Panera IPO via the spec.

So Panera brands has over 4,000 locations worldwide, uh, 2,120 Panera bread locations in 48 states and Canada. They also own caribou coffee, 713 locations in 10 countries and Einstein bros bagels, a thousand units in the U S Panera was publicly traded for 25 years before being bought out by J a B Panera has expanded their omni-channel growth.

They get 45% of their sales from e-commerce. So a high growth area there, then a deal announced today. CPT K announcing a deal with Bravo, which is a global leader in cloud-based access control and smart building tech. This is a SAS play connected devices. I'm not familiar with this one as much, but the company serves, uh, over 44,500 enterprise.

Commercial real estate and multi-family accounts and has over 23 million active users. They expect, uh, $417 million in revenue in 2025, a compounded annual growth of 55%. They are the single, single largest access control system in the world. Um, so again, they, they work with whole foods, DocuSign and other companies.

So one to keep an eye out on here and then our other big deal announced this morning, a announcing that they are bringing Presto public. So Presto, um, is a restaurant, a technology company think tablets, right where your server takes your order or tablets on the table. A pipe of $70 million did include investments from a franchise groups for young brands, Applebee's Outback and McDonnell.

Company was founded by Ray Rojat Surrey, who is the co-founder of lift. So something to keep an eye out there. If you know the restaurant industry right now, you know, there is a labor crisis and this is a company that said they can help with margins and help with labor, um, using technology. Uh, so this is one to definitely keep an eye on.

We saw toast go public earlier this year, Lightspeed and Olo have gone public. Those restaurant technology stocks have gone up significantly, uh, Presto add 2020 revenue of 26.1 million. They see revenue hitting 30 million in 2021 and growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 94%. The merger between embark and N G a B was approved.

Uh, that's going to trade us ticker, E M B K, beginning to market. And then just a note out here, um, from our friend Daniel Johnson on Twitter, Metro, we've been saying for months, right. We needed to see more spec deals get announced in September. There was 12 SPAC mergers in October 11 announcements. And in November, in 10 days, we have already gotten 10 announced mergers.

So, uh, definitely, uh, seeing that trend increase though. What do you think of that, Mitch? Are we going to see a lot more deals now, uh, with some of these stocks trading favorably on the definitive agreement? Of course, you know, that always helps it. Um, you know, one thing that we've been looking for is for definitive agreements to come back and being a factor, right?

I mean, for a while there, it just, wasn't a factor. Even when you got the agreement or you got rumors of deals, it wasn't moving the stock. Um, so now it's very important. We're paying attention to those, uh, definitive agreements. And when you continue to look to see if we get the agreements to continue going up and showing you that what the specs took a second there, they took a time out.

I said, hold on a second. Okay, now let's go ahead. Let's go back at it. Let's get back into the fire into the fire. And so we'll see if, if we continue seeing this, um, I think you're going to continue seeing that there'll be some winners, there'll be some loses. And now it's the time. Now's the time to really start looking at these and then figuring out which ones make sense to you at the price point that they're at.

All right. Definitely. Uh, uh, it looks like we're waiting on our interview here, Mitch. Should we get into the watch list or anything else from the, the news there? I know the mile buyout is something we talked about off air, right? Uh, Metro miles traded under $10 for a long time. They have great technology that pay per mile insurance, and it looks like lemonade and insurance company decided, Hey, if this thing's going to keep trading under $5, we're, uh, we're going to snap up and buy it.

Um, because the due diligence is already out there. Right? The financial projections are there public. Like, that's one of the advantages. Now, if you're a company looking to acquire, if you buy a company that already went public via SPAC, there's a lot of information out there. What do you think, Mitch? I think you had a chance, you know, uh, we were looking at this, I was even looking at this yesterday to make a buy.

When I heard the news, the news hit the tape and it was still trading at 3 26. You'd already be up towards three forties. So I think it was, you had a chance there, you know, uh, not, not many times. Do we get a chance to get a stock that comes out with a catalyst or something? I still would've played this to the upside.

Um, it still has a chance to keep going on up, but we'll see what happens. And then what you're going to see is that I think in Chris and I have talked about it, a lot of these, these facts that are down towards the say under five are going to be really. Uh, acquisition targets for bigger companies because they can get them on the cheap now that their valuation has come down there and they're able to go ahead and come after them looking for the upside.

Uh, that's what happened here in mile, all the way down towards $3, looking like, okay, there you go. Now we can get it out of the discount lemonade, stepping in at the right time and taking it right under our feet. Uh, the last one I want to talk about, um, we can go ahead and we'll get into our interview next.

Um, but I do want to talk a little bit about L a Z E R and then the video deal. And if you feel that we're going to get other deals out of this, uh, do you think that others might react after seeing a deal with uh, Navidea I know I still haven't heard maybe at deal with a M. Uh, and some other on some other one, you know what I mean?

Like, I think you're really starting to step into that where you could start seeing partnerships come into play. Of course, Laz are also had a deal with it was Volvo, a big deal with Volvo that they would be using their technology and their vehicles. So what are you thinking, Chris for LIDAR and for other autonomous plays?

Yeah. Yeah. Great point, Mitch. Um, you know, I think that's something we're going to continue to see. Uh, I remember when Velodyne went public, uh, now ELD are, they had an investment from Ford, um, prior to the SPAC, merger Ford actually sold out of its position in Velodyne. So here you had, you know, a potential partner and investor who kind of, you know, said, Hey.

Thanks for the investment. We're going to sell and take our profit and probably partner with a different LIDAR company. Um, and that's what you're starting to see now. So Lumina partnering with Novidium and I think that's huge, right? Because the video is well-known for their chips, right. And as you see connected cars, you're now going to partner with a, in a video or an AMD, as you said, Mitch.

So I think you're right. You know, who's AMD going to partner with now, who's going to be their preferred LIDAR company. That's definitely a trend to watch, um, an area to keep an eye out. Uh, ouster another one, right? Oh, you S T you got AI up there on the screen. Um, there, there are several LIDAR companies and I think this area is going to grow, but there's also a lot of them to where maybe there needs to be some consolidation or you will see some, you know, maybe get left behind.

Right. And it's going to be a matter of who has the best technology who has the best price and who has the partnerships? Well Luminari is going to check the boxes now with that partnership within the video. So I'm liking that deal. I think we're still a couple of years away from that big Tam that they talked about.

Um, but I mean, that's a monster deal that a master partnership with a market leader. We'll have to watch a up next. We're going to be getting into Dave. So stick around guys. We'll be having Jason on in a second. It looks like we have someone in the back, which we shouldn't get them on. And just about thinking about two or three minutes here.

Uh, but ALST Aus Chris. I actually ended up making a slight, slight gain on this one would want to close the pre-market pre-market it was up there towards $8. It was up like 15%. Uh, overnight when the earnings came out, but then it turned back around, uh, with L a Z R and we've been watching LA Z are also still pulling back.

I'm still in this one, full disclosure. I'm still long. L a Z R a. I talked about it on Monday. I even talked about it on here that I went long and I mean, I'm looking for the nineteens to hold and they get back up there towards, let's say at least 22, but I think long-term, I mean, I I'd still want to be in this play now with the video connected to it.

I think you're going to see a lot of people end up. Up in the videos technology into their vehicles. And you could hear OEMs maybe take that route. Uh, so we'll see what happens exactly with these, but keep your eyes on all these infrastructure plays, uh, battery plays. Um, there's so much in play right now, and this is why I talked about it.

That these plays are not necessarily only just for right now. Uh, this is kind of like the new decade for us and where are we going to go to in the next future and investments? And that's why we do specs attack because we look at these. Yeah, we can trade them and then it can be trading stocks, but.

Majority of these are more investment stocks looking for that long-term gain high growth and revenues that are really far out, but also far out in what in time. And so that's why I I'm keeping an eye on these. There's a lot that you could have taken some investments when they were in the lows, in the S in the bear market.

I'm going to call it the SPAC bear market of March through, uh, we'll say what three September Chris? Yep. I would say yeah, early September we started, I think turning around the end of September if I remember, right. Yeah. I that's the way I see it too, you know? Um, and, and we went through that bear market and now we're kind of in that area where we could get another bull run and that's what we're looking for.

That's what we're going to keep an eye out for. That's why you see so many of these monthly charts have changed and you'll see a big green camp. Let's see if we get another monthly candle on top of that to be green also. Um, that's what we're going to do. And we'll keep an eye out. A lot of stocks trading up today.

Uh, some that have earnings today. I mean, The list goes on and on today, right? Yeah. There's so many companies today in several of them. I actually, um, own position then over the next couple of days, uh, tonight we've got, uh, evolve hippo 23 and me I'll let, uh, pro Terra, which I own shares of right. Uh, electric vehicle company, uh, that one, you know, had a big pop earlier this week.

Um, that's an interesting one. We've got app harvest, which if you remember. And the app harvest rival was going to go public via SPAC and they called off their deal. So app harvest could have some favorable comments talking about competition tonight. Um, I'll let, I mean, there's going to be a lot of eyes on that one, Metro, right?

Because they got the, the, um, the call-out from the FDA on their SOC not being approved. Um, we should get an update. We should get an update from the company on the timeline. Right. And what they're doing to address how long maybe that product will be off the market. Um, HIMS and hers. I mean, come on, they added Miley Cyrus, Rob ground Koski as, uh, you know, uh, uh, spot or speakers for advertisements.

Um, what is that doing? Is that actually helping the brand, right? Is it increasing, you know, orders? Could they be a Christmas play? I think you mentioned that earlier, Mitch, um, you know, that maybe this could be a holiday play and maybe we'll hear from them. If they have promotions tied to the holiday season and open.

Uh, you know, Zillow, uh, exiting the home, buying business. That's open doors, uh, bread and butter though. I think we're going to hear from them that Zillow getting out is not bad. It's going to actually be favorable for the company. So, uh, I'm looking forward to that call and then we've got BarkBox we've got so fi we got tattooed shaft.

Um, just so far is a big one match, right? Uh, SOF I am long we've. We've had a nice run over the last couple months since I got in. And you know, the big question is going to be the bank charter. Right. And I don't know where necessarily going to get that announcement. But I think someone will at least talk about it in the Q and a, and maybe we get some color on to when they're expecting that to be announced.

Um, so that's interesting and BarkBox, I mean, Rover had good earnings the other night. So, you know, we, we talked about that earlier this week, right? Is BarkBox a sympathy, played a Rover or because, you know, they're subscription based, you know, could it be completely different, um, you know, where they could actually have a bad quarter versus Rover having a great quarter.

So, uh, some interesting names. What are you watching out of these names match? I mean, so many companies reporting tonight, uh, including all these dispatch. All right. So I'll go back to the first list here. So to me, what stands out on this? One, of course you guys know of long outlet and why am I long outlet as I'm expecting eventually to hear that?

Yes, we are in the process of working with the FDA to get our SOC to approve, and we should look forward to that going through. Course there's no guarantee, but that's the statement that I want to hear in the earnings by here, that statement, I could see the stock moving up 20%, just off of that. It doesn't guarantee that it's going to come back into play, but the amount of discount this stock got because of what happened with the FDA.

And, and this is why I went after it is that the fundamentals don't make sense now. And they don't make sense because they're making decent money, but not getting. That PR that premium because of that money. Right. And so w we're going to see their earnings, their earnings sort of gone down, but maybe they release a good catalyst with a forward-looking statement.

Like, Hey, we're working with the FDA to see if we can get this stock approved. And for now we're going to do this. And this that's what I'm paying attention to. We'll see what happens without let Proterra, of course mentioned, look for government mentions. Uh, government help is what I think needs to be done to really get these off, off the feet.

Um, let's say like, if you hear credits or something like that being mentioned additional help being put towards them. That's what you're looking for. App harvest is another one that I'd look for potentially eventually looking for a buyout. I could see APH being a buyout, uh, because it's getting towards those levels where.

It wouldn't make sense for even a company. Like, let's say a big company step in here, Chris and Walmart be like, you know what? We see this going into this area. We see us going into this in the long run though. They have more data than probably even APH on this and they could make a move. So I'm not saying that that's going to happen complete rumor, that I'm just fabricating right here, but more along, just letting you know, like, Hey, keep these on watch.

This is the reason why they're attractive. And especially when they get to a certain price, especially with high growth outlook. They're going to be attractive for stocks to come in here and just buy them out. So we'll see what happens with this one. Uh, with APH of course, take a look at the tattooed chef earnings.

And of course, beyond meat beyond meat could hit earlier the tape and cause TTC F to move. So that's what you got to keep that on. Watch today beyond meat also has earnings and we don't know which one's going to come out first. Um, I'd have to look at a tape to see when TTT, uh, CF has come out, but it says as a conference call at four 30, um, I, I'm not so not so sold on these.

I know Chris and I are not the biggest alternative meat fans, but, uh, I don't know. I don't know what happens to T TCF here. I think you will hear some inflation talk, some supply issues, um, that kind of talk, but we'll see what happens. Okay. Uh, I met, uh, it looks like we're still waiting on our interview.

Um, what about, uh, hugs that. Spec merger, right? Bringing a Panera public Pinera, caribou coffee and Einstein rose. Um, I, I'm not as familiar with, uh, you know, Einstein bros, caribou coffee. Obviously I know the names, uh, you know, but I, I don't eat or eat or, you know, partake in those products. I also, haven't gone to Panera in quite a while.

Uh, this is an interesting, um, you know, SPAC merger though, as it's going to, um, you know, help bring Panera public via traditional IP. But I I'm wondering your thoughts. You know, I just don't know if this gets approved by the sec, it's similar to bill Ackman's Pershing square, um, you know, to, to bring universal music, uh, public.

What do you think Mitch? Uh, you know, are we going to see this deal get approved or, you know, is the sec going to be like, wait a second, you're a SPAC. You bring a company public via SPAC. You don't get to bring a company public via IPO. Uh, you know, this was a complicated deal and I don't think complicated deals are favored right now.

No, definitely. Why, because who gets usually left out of complicated deals, right? It's the one that is pressing on the sec right now to make sure that they make these investments as let's say fair playing level as possible. And so to us that would mean the retail trader is the one that gets left out of this information.

And so for here, I would say. I mean institutions, they got like hundreds of people that could be like, you'll figure this out, you know? But when you're a retail trader, what do you have? You only have one brain. Right? And so for here, I say, you probably see a change. I don't think you'll see, go through personally.

I just don't think you'll see it go through. If they do want to make it go through, they're going to have to change around the structure. Like Chris mentioned and adjust some things for it to actually go through. We saw P S T H. It looked like it was going to go through even did a couple of days and all of a sudden, what did they do?

Pull that plug. Yeah, the timing's weird to me too. Right? Panera hasn't even filed for an IPO. So like, I could see it if Panera had filed for the IPO and let's say, you know, they were going to go public next quarter. Right. But Panera hasn't even announced this yet. Like this spec deal pretty much. Let the cat out of the bag that, Hey, Panera's going public.

And I just don't think the timing's going to work out on this. So, I mean, I'm not in hugs. Uh, I think the opportunity to get into the Panera IPO early could be, you know, advantageous, but I just don't know if this is going to get approved. Um, you know, it's just one of those complicated deals out there also then the warrants become complicated, right?

Because the hugs warrants transitioned to Panera warrants and that just causes confusion. And I mean, look at P S T H it not only got, you know, scrutinized by the sec, but shareholders said, Hey, we're out a window. We don't want to be involved in a complicated deal. So, uh, I, I just don't know about this hug deal.

All right. The last one I want to talk about, uh, let's, let's take a step back to the earnings. So earnings we got out by, uh, so there's going to be earnings. Of course, bark bark is going to have the earnings tonight, but Rover came out with earnings and we were talking about it. Is there a relationship there?

Is there not a relationship there? Let's take a look, right? I mean, at the end of the day, we wanted to talk about it. We wanted to take a look at it and see what we were going to get. I'll go ahead and I'll pull up both charts to see if actually, you know what I can do. I can overlay it. I'm going to overlay it here.

Uh, compare to I'll show you guys what you guys can do. You guys can do this on Benzinga pro when you pull up a ticker, let's say you want to look at the relationship. So you've put the ticker, right? I put Rover. Now I want to add a symbol here. Um, so I'm going to add a symbol and I'm going to look for what we're going to look for bark to see how it, it trades with it.

Right? So I'm going to overlay it on the main. Now you see that orange line that's bark, right? And so we want to see how it reacted with the Rover news. Did it pop up on the Rover news or did it kind of stay trading in its own little thing? And if you can see they kind of trade similar, you see when it goes up and it comes down, levels are getting near the same area and now it's starting to return to the upside.

So what you could see is Rover might be the leader in the industry because it started to push first. And now you want to see. Earnings be good and follow it. So you want to see a spike above this 10 50. Um, and we'll see what happens in bark. Uh, I can take a look here at specifically bark and see if we get that lift that we're looking for.

Uh, so here you guys have bark. It's been trading right now at 7 37 fifties. I'd be looking for an earnings report to take us above seven sixties. Risks would be on his downside six seventies. Uh, well, he we'll see what happens with bark after their earnings report today. Yeah. And I mean, barks a subscription business.

Remember they are getting more products into stores like Costco and others. So that would be the item I would look for on the earnings report. Right. Is what does their retail revenue look like? Their non-subscription based revenue also with bark. You know, what's their acquisition costs, right? That's something we talk about on the show, sometimes sports betting companies, right?

They pay a lot of money to acquire new customers. This is something Netflix did for a long time, right. In order to get new customers, they sent out, you know, mailers, right. Traditional mail offering, you know, a free month of Netflix and then, you know, a to get you to sign up. That's something BarkBox spends a lot of money on.

Right. They spend a lot of money on customer acquisition and that's something that could be digested, uh, you know, from the, the news tonight. So, uh, that's another area to watch, uh, with BarkBox. All right. So, uh, let's go ahead. Let's take a look here at our watch list. Looks like we're having a little bit of issues with our guests.

Uh, looks like they came in and they turned the camera on, but we're not seeing the camera on right now, so we're not going to bring him on, uh, let's. Let's keep going through. It looks like there you go. It looks like we got Jason in here. There you go. Looks like we have them. Give me a thumbs up, Jason, if you're ready.

Hey, there you go. I see the thumbs up. We're all good to go. Let's go ahead, Chris. Let's get into our interview here with Dave. I'll let you take over. Awesome. Well, uh, joining us on SPACs tech. Another exclusive interview here we have Jason Welk. The CEO of Dave company is merging with VPC impact acquisition holdings, three current ticker VPC.

See upon merger completion that new ticker will be Dave D a V E. Jason. Welcome to specs attack. Hey Chris. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. Of course. All right, well, let's dive into questions. One of the first things we always like to know here on specs tech is, you know, why the decision to go public via spec merger and was a traditional IPO also considered by your.

So the decision for us was quite easy. We had the most primitive FinTech investor on the planet tiger global that offered us $150 million pipe paper to go down the public, uh, route. This is pre us even having a sponsor. And so when you have somebody of that magnitude gave you that kind of competence going into, you know, what was at the time of very weak pipe market that gave us all the competence we need to, to want to go for the public markets.

We knew we had the money. We knew we had a, uh, a valuation that was validated by, by one of the best in the business. And we went out to find our, our preferred spec sponsor, which was also an easy choice with victory park, who was a long time debt investor in the company and equity investor. They've known the business since, before I even started it.

And they've also, you know, are now a, a repeat spec successful sponsor with back, which is, uh, I think up 300%. Definitely. All right. So, uh, you know, some people out there may not know what Dave is all about. So let's dive in and hear more about this company. So Dave has a mission of creating financial opportunity.

That advances America's collective potential. Break that down for us. Jason, what does that mean? And why is that mission so important to the company? No more simply said we're just out here to level the financial playing field for the everyday American customers are getting hit with $30 overdraft fees at their bank still, which is, which is crazy.

$30 billion a year spent on overdraft fees for everyday customers, mostly affecting, uh, people who are middle income. And we just think that that's, that's just not fair. Yeah. Everyone knows that feeling of going to get a cup of coffee and then seeing that $34 charts in your bank. And Dave's, Dave's the first company ever to just eliminate.

And we decided that instead of hitting people with these crazy fees, we're just going to be the bank that spots you, that a hundred bucks for free to go buy those everyday essentials without, without dinging you and putting you into debt. And so that innovation alone, which we've seen other sort of challenger banks try to emulate, we really change an industry.

And we're going to continue doing that with other products in the space, the amount of interest and fees that Americans are paying right now, it's about $300 billion a year in short-term credit fees and interest payments, uh, which is about 30% of the average income of a they a middle-class American.

Perfect. So, uh, Dave launched Dave banking in December, 2020 has over 1.3 million members already, uh, you know, talk to us about this number. Is this ahead of where you guys thought you would be Jason or is this, you know, kind of right on path. Yeah, we, we had a wait list for a couple of years. We banking was our number one most requested features.

So just to give a little history of the business, when we started in 2017, the product was just a way for people to connect their existing bank account, we would immerse you about upcoming bills and they would spot you a hundred bucks. If your account's at risk of going negative. Our customers loved that product so much.

They wanted us to launch our own banking product, and that's what rolled out last year. So Dave banking, which is now the flagship feature of the company, this is the future of, of, of the business. And it's going incredibly well. And it's, uh, it's satisfying all the demands of our customers. And we're doubling down on all of our features next year.

So traditional banking's been around for, you know, a long time. Um, and you're trying to disrupt that market a little bit in this David versus Goliath battle. And of course, you know, the company named Dave. So talk to us a little bit about, you know, how David can beat Goliath in bed. Yeah. So when it comes to the major banks, we think that there's, there's a few major advantages to our strategy.

One is sort of speed of innovation. These big banks are moving incredibly slow. Dave is able to build products quickly with, with either ourselves or through these partner products. We don't have the huge compliance departments and the hundreds, hundreds of thousands of employees at these major banks.

The second one is around is around cost. I mean, we think that because of the huge bloated infrastructure of the banks, that's the main reason why they're charging these $34 overdraft fees and $15 minimum balance fees. They can't profitably serve the average American customer without those, but with Dave being a data and software driven company, we have over 11 million registered customers with just over 200 employees.

And that, that cost structure and advantage there leads to better prices for consumer. With we think is just deliver this incredible book that the banks are not going to be able to, to come after. So along with some of these, uh, banking features, uh, another product offered by Dave is a side hustle. So we hear a lot about the gig economy, right?

People getting a second job, um, you know, to do some, uh, gig economy things or, you know, just as another source of income, uh, talk to us about side hustle and how Dave is helping, you know, empower people in the gig economy. Yeah. So we saw two major gaps for the customers that we're serving one, they typically have a lower credit score.

And so we include a free credit building membership with day banking that helps you build credit by just paying your bills on time. So if you pay your telephone bill on time, that can finally help you build your credit, which is pretty amazing. The second one was side hustle, which we found that our customers are they're living paycheck to paycheck for the most.

The majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So there's nothing wrong with that, but we wanted to help members put more money in their pocket. And we saw an opportunity in our data that quite a few members were discovering these gig economy, jobs like Uber and Lyft, but with the explosion of gig economy, with all these different grocery deliveries and at-home surveys and at-home work, we decided to launch our own job board, exclusively dedicated to helping people make more money on the side.

And that's been a huge hit with over 3 million applications submitted and we can see in our data how much money our customers are making off these gigs. And it's in the hundreds of millions of dollars we've put back in our members pocket. So all that combined, you know, really goes back to that, leveling the financial playing field for everyone to get this great experience and not pay the crazy cost that you and I are not paying it.

Awesome. So as you know, Dave adds new customers and also adds out some of these new platforms, uh, and segments, you're seeing the average revenue per user go up. Talk to us a little bit, you know, why it's important to keep adding additional services and increase the average revenue per user along the way.

Yeah, we're, we're so early in our life from an ARPU perspective. And really we today have a very basic banking feature where you can, you have a debit card, you can send a check, you can, you can pay a bill. And then we obviously have our, our innovative extra cash product, which really eliminates overdraft by putting our money back in your pocket.

But the opportunity set in front of us to deliver more value for consumers with more choice across the board, from investing to protecting the landscape is wide open to, to continue to grow ARPU. And especially with that status shared at the beginning of the. $300 billion a year. The average Americans are paying in short-term credit fees and we haven't even cracked into short term credit yet.

So we think that the, the opportunity set is massive here to get this ARPU, uh, up significantly.

So talk to us, you know, just about the overall a Tam, right? The total addressable market size, um, you know, for some of the segments that the company operates in and also maybe headed in the future. Yeah. So we look at our audience at about 150 million Americans who are unable to set aside $400 for an emergency.

And that's the customer who is having a clearly, a difficult experience with their bank because they're not able to safely save, they're paying a significant portion of their income to interest and fees. And we think by helping to eradicate that. So, you know, sort of speed of innovation, cost of products that putting more money back in people's pockets will create more opportunity for these folks and getting them access to more financial products.

Yeah, the average customer who's banking at a community bank. They don't have access to great investing tools, advice. Uh, they're they're most likely paying too high of insurance costs and they're paying too high of interest on their credit card and, and, and feeds. So that's really where we see a lot of the upcoming value being delivered to our members.

And that's all stuff that's not even the product today. And we still had, you know, a hell of a 2020 with 122 million in revenue alone also will be incredibly helpful to our members. So we think we're, we're really well positioned to, to be in a great space and could not be more excited to be a public company we've grown this fast and have this much revenue with only raising 60 million of equity.

Which is pretty astounding. And so, you know, when we have the chance now to have several hundred million dollars of capital plus the public markets behind us, we think there's just great opportunity for the business. So along those lines of, you know, what's to come what's ahead, which is something, you know, investors will want to know once you're a public company, we have a slide, uh, talking about some of the future opportunities.

So we've got savings, social investing, and protecting. Uh, can you just talk a little bit about, you know, some of these new areas that Dave plans on entering and why investors should be so excited for these particular segments? Yeah, well, as I said, we, we really today have a very basic banking product. And so the fact that we don't have to have a savings account yet that's our most requested feature.

And so when we talk about savings and social, we want to really deliver a savings experience that can really help our. Uh, say, you know, the average customer, as we said, can not save for a dollars. And so we really want to, uh, tap into the sort of community to help members hit, hit the goals of the otherwise may not be able to hit on their own.

And that innovation we think will be very unique to banking is what we have coming up next from there. Uh, you know, we, we can't talk about the exact roadmap, but you know, we are seriously looking at things like investing and protecting, but having aligned on exactly which one. Yes. Awesome. And then, you know, uh, above that slide there mentioned M and a right.

So going public, you're going to have more access to capital. Um, talk to us a little bit, you know, MNA, is that going to be something to expand in existing areas, into new verticals or a combination of both going forward? I think it would be a combination of both. You know, you look at great opportunities out there.

You know, we're good friends with Dan over at Metro Miami, they built a heck of a business, but you know, consolidation in the market is, is inevitable for great companies that want to add more feature sets. So that's certainly one area. Yeah. They have their own insurance brokerage, and there's a lot of value there and tons of data.

So I can totally see why that, that acquisition, um, transpired. So I think it's a combination of, uh, one just getting access to more talent instead of super hot talent market right now for FinTech. So consolidation around feature sets and just getting more people into the business, uh, I think are sort of top of mind for us.

One of the things mentioned in the press release in the presentation was a Dave's commitment to community. Um, so having pledged over 13 million meals to feeding America since launch, uh, you know, talk to us about this mission and why it's important to give back to the community, uh, for. Yeah, community is a big part of our strategy at the company.

We think that getting customers to one, interact with their community through Dave, so that they're sharing their daily experience with others, 30% of our customer acquisition is actually from word of mouth. And so making sure we are getting that great, uh, community network effect is, is pretty significant for us.

And so in addition to that, we wanted to help our members who are potentially in a tough financial spot to be able to give back to their community and give them the opportunity to do so. And so specifically with our extra cash product, we don't charge any mandatory fees. We ask customers when we give them that a hundred dollars or $200 to go buy gas or groceries without charging those crazy $34 overdraft costs, we let customers pay what they think is fair for that.

So, and that comes in the form of a tip between zero and 15%. It's often not a great big tip, but for every percent somebody does give us, we, we pledge a meals at feeding America and that helps our business, but it also helps our customers feel good about, uh, giving back to others when, when they were also in a time of deep.

Awesome. And then you mentioned 20, 20 revenue of 122 million up 60%. And the financial projections from 2018 to 2023 compounded annual growth of 98%. Can you talk to us a little bit, you know, uh, how is this broken down in terms of organic growth from existing business lines and then from growth of some of those new areas that Dave plans to enter in the coming years, this is primarily driven by our core businesses.

So banking and, and extra cash. And we're not factoring in a lot of additional products here in the financial sector. Again, it just goes back to, we think that the growth potential here is significant with our ability to go and build the brand and build a household name with the capital that we're going to be bringing in the amount of customers we've acquired so far with such a little amount of money.

We have almost every dollar we've ever raised in the bank still and have achieved this level of success and scale. So that was a good cost. The comfort that the outer years are going to continuously, uh, bear a lot of fruit. As more people start to trust that digital banking is something they can really trust with their, their primary financial paycheck.

And we're still very in the very early days of that for all players in the industry. But we are going to cross a threshold soon because the, the premium experience we can deliver to customers at the affordable cost compared to these major banks is going to be continue to be unprecedented compared to these legacy.

Um, I'm very excited to disrupt the space. All right. I'm going to go ahead and jump in here with some of my own questions. Uh, so one of the things to answer, I mean, I just got to state it as easy as possible. So how do you guys generate revenue? So one of the main ways to generate revenue, which we love is through interchange fees.

So every time our customer takes their Dave debit card and goes and buys DAS, we aren't getting paid from that, from that merchant one to one and a half percent of every card swipe. So we're making money at the same time that user that's swiping that card right now, we're offering Dave customers, uh, cash back.

Every time they swipe their card. So our customer is getting a discount and Dave is actually getting paid for that transaction. So it's sort of a business model that aligns itself very well with our members. The second one is around extra cash. We make money in two ways. Similar to Venmo and cash app. If you want the money instantly put on your debit card, we have an instant transaction fee for that.

And then additionally, we have the, the tip model, which both those, these are completely optional. So again, it speaks to this business model that is very on the side of the, of the customer, but at the same time, we're generating meaningful, meaningful, uh, revenue, just because of the sheer scale that we've gotten in the.

All right. So the next question I want to get into is about, of course, extra cash. You know, one thing is I was at one point like a college student and, uh, you know, we always are just counting our pennies and when we're in college. And so one of the things that you run into a lot is that sometimes you need just some extra cash, right?

Um, it may not be a massive amount. It could be something small, it could be $50, $20, uh, but just to get us through to the next paycheck. Um, so one of the products that you guys have extra cash does something very similar to this. I mean, it gives you up to $200 for those extra cash, uh, without the fees. So explain me a little bit more of this product and how someone let's say a college student or how you guys put in there.

I like the, the reference to hipster. Uh, so explain me this, how this works, Jason. Yeah. I mean, this product was really born out of my own personal gripes with, with banking. I mean, I was at a guy in college who, you know, forgot about my water and power bill or forgot about some upcoming expense. And then all of a sudden my account is negative five bucks and my bank just screw me with a $34 charge.

So that's, that was, uh, incredibly frustrating. And so when I looked around the industry in 2016, where we're going to build Dave, obviously the big banks are, are hurting people with these huge fees, but our competition, these neobanks that were out there in market, their approach to overdraft was to just decline your transaction and to say, you know, you can't afford this transaction.

We're not going to charge you a fee, but you also can't buy it. And I, I also thought that was incredibly unfair for people who are trying to get into a better financial system. So what, what we did and what the innovation that they realized was that overdrafts actually an amazing thing. It's just that people hate the feats.

I mean, who wouldn't want to have extra cash to go get gas or groceries when you run out. And so that's really where the innovation came from the product to say, Hey, we're going to give you this money for free. We know you're good for it because our data engine tells us that you have some money coming in to your account in the future.

And so we think the risk is pretty low and we're going to just extend the money and then we're going to let you figure out what you think is fair to pay. So when we help you get home and out from, from work or helped you get to that job interview, is that worth zero to you? Is that worth 50 cents? Is that worth a couple bucks?

And it turns out that that works really well. Um, and that's the innovation that Dave really spearheaded in this. Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, it's something that a lot of us, especially when we're just trying to get off of our feet, uh, could definitely use and it's great to have access to. Um, so the next question I have comes a little bit of mixed something that I wanted to ask also from the chat we'd love pulling from the chat here.

So, and cow in the chat also, mark, em, talking about it. What about cryptocurrency? How could this be implemented into the future growth of the platform and what's next, Jason? Uh, it's hard to ignore. I mean, we've had, uh, mark Cuban's has been on our board of directors for the last five years and he's been pounding the table for years for us to engage with, with crypto and for us, we just, it's just about the right timing.

And so certainly something that we look at on a daily basis and there's many fastest to crypto. You know, just overall investing to, to defy interest, to, you know, cross border remittance. And we've got to figure out what's the right thing for us and our customers, what they're really looking for. Um, but it's certainly on, uh, you know, on our radar and, uh, we're, we're taking it seriously.

All right. The last question I have is of course, you mentioned a part of this, the credit building features that are now being added to it. Uh, can we continue to see growth here for, uh, kind of credit building features? Yeah, I think we, we might the idea to help people build, build their credit, but ultimately with extra cash, we, we already are helping people just get more money in their pockets in an unsecure unsecure.

And so again, while we see a lot of the challenger bank competition, all moving towards secure credit cards, I've never loved secured credit just because it, it ties people's money up, you've got deposits and it doesn't move the needle nearly as much as if you're actually using unsecured. And so, um, you know, we'd love to leverage the data that we've got.

We've actually issued 35 million extra cash advances to people since we started the company. So that wealth of information we think gives us a huge data advantage to, uh, actually use for, for, you know, doing greater, greater amounts of credit. That definitely I know in an environment where let's say, especially a user probably that is using Dave going through it, you know, looking at their paycheck, trying to get a little earlier, need some extra cash.

Excellent way to help them. I mean, credit building is definitely going to help them and teach them to get to that next level. I'm bringing Chris back. We got some questions also from the chat. Uh, Chris, do you want to know? Yeah. We had a lot of questions about crypto. So Jason, thanks for answering that. Uh, we got a question here from the chat, um, from mark and, you know, we talk about a lot of companies that go public via SBACK and Mark's comment, you know, is about several fintechs that have gone public via back that have, you know, fallen since the merger completion.

So the question is how is Dave differentiated from Payoneer money lion, catapult Paysafe um, so you know, what, what gives you, you know, strong validation that Dave is going to be, you know, a good company going forward for investors. If you care to comment on that, Yeah. So what from, from Vintech, I mean, there's been some sector is choose obviously surrounding, uh, InsureTech, which I think is drag drag.

Some of those companies down has been, it there's been some challenges around scale and just economics in general. I think what really sets Dave apart from the companies that were mentioned is that we are on heavily in that financial playing field for, for our members. And we've built a consumer brand that primarily is, is growing, uh, largely organically to our customers.

And with that deep product focus, I think having that, be that to be that go-to bank for customers in this country that really has their back and really helps them deliver that premium, affordable experience that they're not getting from their traditional bank is, is why people shouldn't invest in, in this, uh, this company, you know, there are still 150 million bank customers who are living paycheck to paycheck.

They're overpaying on fees. And as I said, I think we're very early days in the people really willing to switch over to their primary financial relationship over to, to this company. I think that Dave is at, we're also in the early days of helping customers sort of get back on their feet. And now it's about creating that financial opportunity.

And the competition that was just mentioned seems to be really anchoring themselves only to just keeping people on, you know, early on their feet. And that's very different from. Thank you for the honesty. Uh, you know, that was a great question there and a, you know, a great response, Jason. So, uh, we thank you for your time today.

So joining us on SPACs attack again, guys, Jason wealth, the CEO of Dave company, merging with VPC impact acquisition holdings, three current ticker VP CC, and upon merger closed. The new ticker will of course be D a V E as in Dave. Jason, thanks so much for your time.

All right there. Sorry about cutting you off a little bit there. Jason just wanted to bring you back off a boat. Chris. Interesting fact, I mean, at the end of the day, I've been hit with those overdraft fees. Right? I can tell you guys about a story really quickly. I'll I'll try to be quick about it. There was a one point when I was a young kid, I was about 15 years old and I had just gotten a bank account in bank of America.

And I just started using this account. I was using it for like the year and then I took some time off of it because I was going to school. You know, I was a young kid. Eventually what ended up happening is I started working when I was 16 and I started using that account, like back and forth. I ended up going to school and then I would only work in summer.

I'd have a summer job, right? Like everybody, what ended up happening is I ended up getting hit with. Uh, purchased it. I made, but a fee, a monthly fee that pulled me under the, the overdraft. Then they hit me with $35 overdraft fee. And not only did they hit me with one, they hit me with 10 of these every day, every single day until I noticed.

And you know, what ended up happening, Chris? It's a really sad story, but I worked the whole week as a, as a kid, 16 years old, worked a week, put a check that was like $171 into the ATM to end up owning the bank money still because of the overdraft fees. And did they want to, you know, help me out, you know, like take it away.

You know, I didn't young kid didn't notice it and it, Nope. It took my paycheck and more. And that's why I don't bank with bank of America no more. So PAC you lost my business. That just shows you why companies like this are needed. Right? I mean, at the end of the day, you, you don't want to be having that kind of worry as a young child worrying about if you're going to get overdraft to death, literally.

Uh, so it, it hurt me one time, Chris. Yeah. I mean, traditional banking I think is ripe for disruption. And you heard Jason say that, right? The David versus Goliath battle, uh, this is a company, you know, trying to, uh, empower the individual customer. And also, I love hearing the crypto talk, shout out to our chat for the questions.

And I know you wanted to ask about. Mark Cuban on the board. Uh, obviously Cubans, a big bullish, uh, you know, investor in crypto. Um, so interesting to hear those comments from Jason, but we will follow the progress of this merger, um, as it goes forward, we're out of time for today, but we got, um, the power hour coming up next.

So stay tuned. Everyone don't go anywhere. All right, you guys, where the hype meets the stock coming up next Benzinga live is going to be getting into some earnings report. You got an interview and stay tuned. Later on this week, I heard there might be a big, big spec interview on there. Total tunnel buddy, maybe expensive.

Maybe he'll give you the news. Go ACSM. Find out. See you guys next time on the specs on baby.

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Episode Summary:

On Today's SPACs Attack Chris Katje & Money Mitch get into the top spacs stock to watch for the week. Which SPAC is a buy? Find out!

Interview with Khosla Ventures Acquisition merger partner, Valo Health Founder & CEO, David Berry M.D, Ph.D (KVSA)

Guests:

Valo Health Founder & CEO, David Berry M.D, Ph.D

https://www.valohealth.com/

Hosts:

Mitch Hoch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/STORYInvestors

Chris Katje

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chriskatje

For FASTER NEWS and IN-DEPTH market data, check out Benzinga Pro. For a free two-week trial go to http://pro.benzinga.com/register

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Unedited Transcript:

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/spacs-attack/donations

Episode Summary:

On Today SPACs Attack Chris & Money Mitch dive into the NOV SPAC Calendar and take a deep look into each one and the chances of them running.

Hosts:

Mitch Hoch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/STORYInvestors

Chris Katje

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chriskatje

For FASTER NEWS and IN-DEPTH market data, check out Benzinga Pro. For a free two-week trial go to http://pro.benzinga.com/register

• Listen to SPACs Attack Archive here

• Subscribe to all Benzinga Podcasts here

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Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.

Unedited Transcript:

What's going on team. Guess what? Darth Vader, Mitch and Chris catchy. What's going on. Hey, what's up everyone.

Yeah. We got a great show today. Um, Mitch, whether or not your voice sounds like Darth Vader. I mean, the news is the same, right? We're here to provide the news, the headlines and the trade ideas for the spec world out there. Uh, yeah, let's go ahead and let's smash that, like, let's get started. We got a lot of people here, uh, ready to go.

Um, what do you think, Mitch? Should we start with some headlines? We'll definitely get into those headlines. Like first things first, we've got to start up the specs. What's going on, traders out there. Yes. Is Darth Vader Mitch here, but guess what? I got the crystal pedia. That's all we need, man. What's going on, Chris?

Yeah. I mean, uh, it's an exciting day out there. We got a lot of movers, again, something we've been seeing, you know, all week with a lot of SPACs trading up, you know, 3%, 5%. We've got a couple double digit leaders today, too. And of course we did have that deal yesterday. Right. Um, for, uh, black rifle, coffee and shares were up quite a bit in the early morning session.

They did pull back, but they ended the day up 15%. So that was a nice, you know, one day deal announcement, move something we're starting to see. Um, what's. Yeah. You know, one thing that we're keeping an eye out for is what's going to happen. Is this the next wave? Is this, is this just certain ones moving? I mean, there's a lot going on.

I mean, I, I, myself, even in two of them that have been moving up today, uh, up one. 16% up another charge starting to see it a curve at the bottom there. We'll see what happens. I mean, it's definitely an environment where we're getting back to the spec game and you need to know which ones are, which so that you guys can get onto these before.

Not after they run. Uh, Chris, I know that you have some headlines for us. Let's go ahead and take us back to those headlines and then we'll get into the watch list and see what's out there and what's moving.

All right guys. Yeah. Not a ton of, of headlines today. Um, but let's get through them and then, you know, we'll look at that watch list and then we're going to get into some trade ideas as well. So the big news this morning, we had two former SPACs announcing a part. So embark is partnering with Luminar to accelerate the commercial SAS, autonomous truck deployment.

So that ticker, N G a B and L a Z R right there on the screen. So the state-of-the-art LIDAR sensors will power Embark's autonomous trucking solution. Enabling more advanced, safer self-driving for its commercial trucking platform. Um, this partnership gives embark and its carriers partners access to Luminari cutting edge long range.

LIDAR sensor embark is working on delivery of 14,200 non-binding truck reservations for 2024. So definitely something to keep an eye out on. Then we have a, the news from Zillow, right. And we're going to get into this later in the trade ideas. So Zillow announced that they are winding down their Zillow offers.

So. And that they will be selling 7,000 houses, accenting that business line. Um, two former SPACs open door, ope N an offer pad are in that business. So those are two potential, um, companies to watch that could benefit from Zillow exiting, or they could also face some, you know, headwinds with that industry.

Maybe not being as positive as thoughts. So, uh, we'll, we'll talk about that later. And we do have a company that everyone should be, uh, watching, uh, right now. And by watching, I mean, uh, you know, keeping an eye on, but not watching their presentation because our show's on of course, but Ivan, I V a N the CEO will be making an announcement.

Um, anytime. They started a presentation today at 11:00 AM. Eastern time battery world for S E S switches, the merger partner with this SPAC. Um, they said that they will be, uh, announcing new electric vehicle lie metal cells. This is a battery play. I called this out earlier in the week, um, with BCRC and Q S moving.

We do have shares up 2% right now to 10 50. Um, but we will see what Ivan, uh, SCS has to say, and if you missed it, we actually interviewed SES on the show. That was definitely one to watch if you, uh, you know, miss that, um, we'll, we'll drop that link in the chat later on, but keep an eye out on IVA. Then we have Berkshire grey BGR.

Why I saw someone mentioned this one in the chat. They did have news today. They expanded the availability of their robotic e-commerce fulfillment solution. Um, so this is going to help retailers develop solutions that integrate the online and physical. Of retail, um, which helps them fulfill online orders with their in store inventory.

So this is definitely a company to watch in the e-commerce space, using artificial intelligence. They do have some big partners, um, and deals. So a BGR Y on watch with that news. And then, uh, in the sports betting world, we got a New York sports betting update. So remember, a couple months ago, I gave everyone the short list of the finalist for the New York licenses.

And according to Ryan Butler, uh, formerly of the action network, he said that New York could announce as early as this week, two groups for the online sports betting licenses and those groups would include Bally bat, bat, MGM, DraftKings, and FanDuel in. And then the second one consisting of Caesar's win-back resorts world and rush street interactive.

So your specs to watch there, of course, our RSI for rush street, DK on G for DraftKings and Aus, which is bringing when. And then speaking of DraftKings draft Kings announced a strategic deal with iHeart media today, um, so that they become the official ad supplier for iHeart media solutions and over 160 markets nation wide, um, they will be able to co-create and distribute long form content with iHeart media.

Um, not a huge surprise here. Draft Kings is dipping its toes first. Into the media markets. That's something I called out as a catalyst. They're not just going to be a sports betting play. They're also getting into media and content. Um, so keep an eye out on that deal. They do have earnings, uh, later this week on Friday and it will be one of the companies we talk about later on.

And then high-side motors, H Y Z N uh, their partner hearing a car. Construction of nationwide green hydrogen refueling network in New Zealand. So a refilling deal in New Zealand for highs on motors. That is a hydrogen trucking play. Um, one to possibly watch them. No, we haven't talked about, uh, new specs lately.

You know, that could be IPO, but I saw one that definitely caught my eye and I think it's going to catch a lot of people's eyes. And that is because Kevin Duran, NBA, superstar and champion is attaching his. To infinite acquisition Corp, a new spec that will seek to raise $200 million selling 20 million units.

Each unit will include one common share and one half of a warrant. Nice to see the half warrant size there. And this back, um, is a 50 50 partnership between 35 ventures and lion. So thirty-five ventures was co-founded by JIRA and rich Kleiman LionTree is a leading investment and merchant bank. So 35 ventures.

If you're not familiar with it. They launched in 2016 and they have a good track record of investments. We talk about celebrities and athletes in the SPAC world. Um, you know, this is one who has a great track record of investment. So 35 ventures invested in Postmates, which was acquired by Uber, uh, acorns.

Overtime caffeine, Robinhood, and Coinbase. They also invested in the MLS team, Philadelphia union, and they have boardroom, which is a sports business media platform. If you don't know, rich Kleiman prior to launching 35 ventures, he launched rock nation sports with Jay Z and he also was with rock nation as a music manager.

Thirty-five ventures with also an investor on the pipe of respect merger between red ball acquisition, R B a C N C meek. And. Has advised over $600 billion worth of deals since being launched in 2012. Um, in the spec industry, they've been an advisor on several mergers, including 23 and me and HIMS and hers.

So the spec is going to target. Sports health and wellness, food tech and supply e-commerce and crypto and digital assets. Those are the areas they're specifically focusing on. And, you know, obviously Duran getting involved with a sports company would be a big deal, but I really liked the highlight of crypto in the prospect is so it highlights the rise of platforms like Coinbase, crackin, and Blackbox.

I'd also mentioned super rare dapper labs, AXI, infinity to central land. So rare and, and F teas. Um, again to ramp was an early investor in Coinbase in 2017. Um, I think maybe they go after the crypto market. So this will be a speck to watch again, not publicly traded yet. Um, but we'll, uh, be talking about this one.

And then turning to a, some calendar information. We have DC RC, the battery play merging with solid power. They announced that their merger vote will be on December 7th. That's the first December date that. And then a couple of merger votes from this week, we had SWB care BK approving their deal with Byrd 67% of shares redeemed, which makes this around a $10 million or a 10 million share float.

So SWB K on watch a RTP Y approved with Aurora. They had 77% of shares reduced. Um, OT and 60% of shares redeemed on the goat deal. Um, and KV SB, next door deal approved and they had 7.4% of shares read the game. So those are all wants to watch with the redemption trade. And then we do have earnings tomorrow from Nicola MP materials.

Avello dine P a E N blue owl cap. And then as I mentioned, yesterday's leader SBE a on the black rifle coffee deal shares were up 15% yesterday. They're down around 8% today. And have to note that based on 99.2 million shares of volume yesterday, um, that's a big volume leader, right? For SPEA. Your next highest yesterday was 17 million for DW.

AC of course the Donald. Um, that's what I've got MEChA, you know, I said it wasn't a ton of headlines, but now reading through it, it actually seems like a decent amount. But what do you think Kevin DeRay at, uh, getting into the spec game? I mean, those are some pretty big companies he's invested in before.

Uh, it also was mentioned in the prospectus that he did spend some time with the golden state warriors, which is, uh, coincidentally right next to Silicon valley, where a lot of these tech startups, uh, Uh, our headquartered. So what do you think does Duran land a good deal here in the, I mean, it, it's not something to kind of judge celebrities and athletes and these specs, but one thing that I've talked to.

Is that at the end of the day, when you're an athlete, you get, you get like insight. And a lot of times your friends are some higher up people, right? Like you're talking to investment bankers, you're talking to lawyers, doctors. Those are the, usually the people that. These athletes are going to talk to, and they're going to go ahead and get, use those insights to lean them into their investments.

I think that that's what happened here. I'm sure someone talked to the rent in the last six months or a year about. I told them how this could be something that you could use to take a company public and be part, and not only take part, but be, you know, high on a board that you could start getting into this investment type of game.

I think Duran is seeing how certain athletes have done. Like, let's say the key member shack, you know, how we've been seeing shack really take it to the next level in investing. And that's his focus now. I think that's what the rain is looking forward to in retirement. He's already starting to look forward towards that.

So he's starting to dip his toes and making investments, and this is something to pay attention to because I think the rent is going to talk to the right people to at least get them into a position that could potentially go up. Yeah. I mean, you know, you mentioned shack, right? We've talked about celebrities, athletes getting into specs, also making investments, right?

You know, we even saw that, uh, this week, right with, uh, Coca-Cola acquiring the rest of body armor, that was an early investment from the lake Kobe Bryant. Right. And his family got a nice payout this week, you know, as part of that deal. So these athletes, a lot of times they're investing in companies, you know, that they use their products or that they know, and they see the growth there.

So I really liked to ramp here getting into the spec. And again, I really liked the highlight of crypto, right? Not just an athlete going after, you know, a sports team, a sports company, or a, you know, a health and wellness. The fact that crypto is mentioned right there in the prospectus, you know, gets me excited as we look for more crypto names in the industry.

Um, but yeah, so a lot of headlines again, match. Um, but, uh, should we, uh, should we jump to the watch list today? I know we've got, uh, quite a few movers out there. All right. Before we jump into the watch list, I did see you bring up a headline that did interest me, um, was the update from. D K and G about going into media.

Um, and so one thing that I've talked about is there's a name that I've talked about that I think did this very well, and that was Bally sports. Um, why I liked valley is because what they did was they went after the media side first. Nailed that down. Chris gave themselves an ability to be what present on your TV, right?

When you turn anything that used to be a Fox sports network type of, of sports. Now, what is it? It's a Bally's for. Stream. And what does that do? That gives the brand recognition to the next level. Then they started dipping their toes into sports, betting, DK, and G going about this now reversed, right? They did the sports betting and now they're dipping their toes into the media.

Why are they doing that? Because they realize what is important is being front and center. To the consumer, that's watching the sports because that's how you go ahead and you get your name out there to the people that are going to be doing the sports betting. And so it's very important to see that on the TV match the branding, and then you'll go and look for that brand.

When you go for the sports betting play, I think that's what D K a G is starting to step in here. That's what valleys start about first. They said. Well, w we don't have the brand name to step up and compete with DraftKings, FanDuel, and pen and Barstool sports. But what we can do is take the media underneath diversify and give ourselves an ability to battle in this industry.

Yeah. And I mean, you mentioned Barstool right there as well, you know, Barstool built up their media brand and then. Sports betting through the partnership with Penn national. Also we're seeing FUBU right. Work into that as well, starting as the media company, the streaming platform, and going to launch sports betting later this year, and then also ESPN right match.

There's the rumor that ESPN wants in the sports betting game. And obviously. They have a big brand, right. A well-known brand. And you know, with that, they're going to be able to bring customers to whatever sports betting platform they launch. Right. Whether it's their own or whether they partner with someone.

Um, so definitely a yeah, an interesting topic. And with that being said, there's some of these, uh, sports betting companies might fall behind. Right. If you don't have the, the media deals and. It's something to talk about because it gives us diversification, right? I mean, at the end of the day, that's what we want to hear from these is we don't want them to be in only one kind of area.

And then that causes them not to have that outlook. Um, and now one thing that been mentioned in the chat that Cathy was, has been buying the Kanji. I like it here too. I mean, but like always, you got to determine your own risk and return. Now, one thing that I will state is that for me, when you think about these sports, one of the ones that I'm looking to continue seeing is the one that was mentioned in a rumor with RSI, but never coming out is fanatics.

Fanatics is going to start dipping their toes into this. So look for a potential buyout, whether it be RSS. Or another stock that I'm looking at to potentially get bought out to Chris is actually GaN. I actually could see GaN being a target for acquisition because of their tech stack. That's what we're looking for here.

Look for companies that have that tech stack, those are gonna be the ones that are going to be acquired because they just don't maybe have the brand recognition and market, uh, market. Right now, but they do have the technology and that's why they're targets. All right. Let's move forward. Let's get into the watch list.

I just wanted to take a second there. I think it's so important. You know, this one thing that I focused on at the beginning was the media side of sports betting and how that really comes into play. If you look at it work, we're a media driven society, right? Chris, we're driven by the shows we watch in how we, that literally drives the consumer, the content you watch now.

A lot of that is how you go and make purchases. And so I think this is going to be a lot of what you're going to see. The sports spreading world is maybe even someone competing with ESPN. Could it really be? I think they're getting to see it. You're going to definitely see it. That's why ESPN is concerned.

That's why they want to get into sports betting. So we've got to stay up with the times, if not the times runners you'll fall behind. Right. That's that's exactly what. All right, let's go to the watch list. See what's out there. If you guys got a spec that has been moving this week or today, please mention it in the chat.

We'll go ahead and touch some of these. Then we got the November calendar. This is, I think the best thing that Chris does for us is give us all these dates that we need to keep on watch. So stay tuned for that. Hit the thumbs up and let's get the Watson

All right, traders, uh, starting to see that skills is up 9%. We also got Z E V moving lightning E motors. Chris, what are you thinking about Z E V. Is there a news on this or is this kind of bore the EBV play catching up? So we had news yesterday that partnership with Siemens for the level two charging stations, but match that's surprising.

Cause yesterday. We didn't actually see that big of a move on that headline. And now today we're, we're getting the big move. So a, this could just be an EBV sector play. Right. But I did like that partnership with Siemens yesterday, the level two chargers, um, Z E V has had some big runs over the past couple of months.

It's a high flyer. So, uh, we'll definitely be watching that one, but yeah, I'm not seeing headlines today. Um, but that was the big one yesterday and surprise, surprise me. They do have earnings this month, right? So many of these facts earnings. So I'm seeing a date of November 15th, uh, for earnings. So Zeeb on watch all month.

All right, let's get back to it. I'm having some, a little bit issues with my pro charts. I don't want them to struggle on us. So I pulled up my other charting service here. Uh, TC, as you guys can see Z E V really getting off of that $8 is seven 50 area. Now we're getting strong through eight fifties. I do like that.

Look, you can hold off that eight 50 and let's see a Z V can make it back up to 10 and then go sideways there. We know how we liked that last drive brought us to 12. Let's see what happens now. All right. Going to go into the next one. Of course, skills is up at the top. We could take a look at that. I mean, I know I saw some analysts being mentioned and I know they changed on over.

Um, Chris, do you think this is the reversal with time and skills? Or do you think they're going to run into some trouble here? Uh, I mean, I, I heard Dennis talk about it today. Right on pre-market prep, the Activision earnings yesterday, the earnings were good, but their guidance disappointed. They pulled some games.

Um, the timing. But the fact that Activision beat, um, you know, could be a positive for the gaming sector, but for me skills still wears the NFL game. Right. That's the big question we've had. They do report tonight after the bell. Um, looks like someone mentioning that in the chat as well. Mitch, what do you think it would take for them on this earnings?

Is it going to be about those past earnings or even if they give us an update on the NFL game and also highlight the new executive that they hired from Amazon, could guidance be enough to really, you know, propel this thing higher. And I don't feel like earnings are really going to matter. I think it's going to be all about the forward looking comments from them.

Yeah, this is one that I feel like everyone just completely loved it right out the gates. They were like skills, skills, skills. That's all I heard about when it came out, but I still yet to see the story match the hype. That's what I would say until that moment. I'm not touching the skills. I wanted it at 10.

Maybe should have taken that at two. Would a risk down to $8. I don't know. Probably would've got stopped out of be honest. Um, so to me at this point, I'm just going to stay off until I feel that the hype matches the story and the technicals also match. Yeah. I mean, I passed it in their plant farm match. I did some of the games and.

I'm not playing them anymore. Right? Th they didn't do enough to keep me engaged. They weren't strong enough games. And I think that's the big thing here. Right? Give me an NFL game. Right, Mitch. We could both download that NFL game. We could wage your money against each other, play against each other. Like that would keep me entertained.

Right. That would keep me coming back. But doing some of these other games, I'm not as excited. Let's be honest. Football games are hard. Yeah. Right. Bad, even mad. And didn't do as well on mobile. Right? It was really, I mean, I tried that too. And that, that was kind of out there that should show you right. If Madden, that title can do good on a mobile game, it just might seem that at least for right now, Volvo.

Maybe the sports schemes are a little bit difficult, especially something that's complex, complex, like football, multiple routes. You have to be able to see and spacing and stuff like that really in-depth view. I think this is where skills is struggling. Maybe that NFL game that was. Wasn't as good as they thought it was going to be.

So they had to pull the plug. That's why they haven't mentioned it. That's why they don't talk about it. That's what I keep quiet about it because they had the pull that plug and they're looking for the next driver. So look for the next driver. I. Kick that NFL game to the side. I'm looking for the next one.

What can they do to get me interested in, maybe talk about some better or something like that. We'll talk, we'll, we'll pay attention to it on the earnings call. Let's keep going. Next one up the two that I am really happy to see moving up. Desktop metals. Of course oblongs desktop metals, but also QS. QS is one that I've been looking at for awhile.

So let's take a look at both of them really quickly before. Beautiful day. Guess what? Chris look at my, where my buyer's zone was and it went right on top of it. That's just how it goes. Sometimes guys, I was looking for a pullback to seven sixties. Uh, did get down towards seven nineties. It didn't even go down towards the seven eighties.

So I wasn't able to get my add back as I took some profit into this bar. But now that we're above nine. What do I do? I don't add here. I just let the position go. I'm all the way down here. So now at this point I could just let the stock try to build and gain on the momentum. Yeah. I mean, desktop metal, right?

I couldn't believe how low this thing got and it's starting to come back to life. We could see the 3d printing industry come back and Mitch, the one I would mention here, the LD Velo 3d. Is up 14% today. I want you to take a look at the one month chart on VLD because this thing has been, you know, just a steady riser over the last month.

I mean, we saw sideways action, $8, and then once it started moving, this thing got higher and I will note of course, Right. Cathy wood has been buying up a ton of shares of this company, right. And this is a, a space X supplier. Right? And what do we know about space X, Mitch? You can't invest in space X. So the next best thing you can do is to find the companies partnered or working with space X.

If you want exposure to. To space acts. So also, so they have space exposure. They have 3d printing exposure. I mean, I like VLD and I mean, the charts look nice. What do you think? A little annoyed that I sold this, this, I ended up, I held this one for like four or five months and it didn't do anything so much on the name.

You guys remember me? I. Proportion for this stock. I mean, and it's all about what Chris has talked about. That space X relationship to me, anything, anything to do with space sex is going to do great. When, when companies like NASA give you the backing that they're giving space X, if you hear the comments that come out of NASA, Th that rocket they're just like, yo, where have you been all my life space X.

That's how they're acting like. So to me, you have to look for some of these types of plays. And these to me are more generational plays than they are traits. Yes. You could be trading it right now, making a move from 10 to 12 and you could be that type of trader, but I, I love these for a long-term investment.

And that's the one thing that we've talked about with fellow was that it wasn't going to take a little while. But that we could see the upside, especially with relationships, like in space, like space X, All right. So catching up with the chat, uh, Cole. Uh, yes, I am long just to confirm you on that. You asked if I'm long DM.

Yes, I am long DM. I'm not long QS, but I did. I did push on my man, Carl and the check to buy it. Well, that's my friend right there. I don't, I don't know if he's still logging it, but QS looking great. Chris, what are you thinking about this now? Yeah, I mean, Q asks, I, I, I feel like at some point we're going to get a pullback, right?

I mean, The under $20 right around that mark was the time to get in this one. Um, you know, they're still years away from really launching this. So, you know, I think it's going to move on news, but ultimately, you know, there's no revenue, there's no earnings. Um, but it is getting a lot of, um, mentioned, you know, across, uh, social media.

And fin twit, you know, I'm actually trying to catch up with the Ivan news, right? So the, the headline I said was Ivan IVA and, um, their merger partner SES had a presentation today and they announced a new lice, a bad. And again, I think maybe the rotation could come, right? He has already had the run Ivan's trading at like 10 60, I think today.

So I feel like that one could see a move. So to me, I would be going after the one that hasn't had the move versus the one that already had the, the. Yeah. The, the way that I think about QS is that it falls in line with lucid. To me, it falls in line with Lucy because it had that type of, let's say retail attention when it was up there towards one 20 and then it dropped down and did what a super long sideways trend that it's trying to break out of.

Of course it needs to get into kind of the 30 fives and forties to really. That, Hey, it's really starting to do that. Move back up to the gap up, but there's an actual, huge gap. That's up here by the eighties and nineties, if it ever gets into that area, I mean, this is a huge risk and return from here. And so that's why I've been looking at QS and thinking that it would come back as we see it's been doing great.

One of the things that I'd point out is the volume that popped it up, and then it came back down to this. Back down, back down, break out. Now the big thing for me now is just for the whole 27 on pullbacks. If it can hold this 27 on pullbacks, I think you're still looking at a bullous, uh, QS, and you could still play this.

This is more a momentum. I think then like Chris is talking about then actual, let's say revenue or expectations being met, but more or less. Just momentum in the name and I could see it continuing, but like Chris said, you could get a pullback in this one. So of course, do your research guys, a framer is saying something well, he'll probably flip on that tomorrow, guys.

Don't worry about it. Yeah. I mean, I'll call it out right now, Mitch. Cause we talk about so far, right? So far that they're probably going to get a bank charter at some point they're also offering early access to, um, the reveal on. So so far, uh, uh, CEO, Anthony Noto used to work at Goldman Sachs, which is where Jim Cramer used to work there they're buddies.

So he's been on the show before, so Kramer hates on SPACs, but I would guess in a week or two, he'll be all over. So Phi again, forgetting that Sophie went public by us back. So, I mean, you can either do what we say right where you say there's going to be winners and losers in the spec, mark. You can't say that all specs are losers and then talk about a SPAC and say it's a winner.

You can't, it doesn't make sense. Right? It's a contradiction. Yeah. Uh, let's just say, one thing that I don't like doing is flipping on my story and at least one of the things that you will hear from me is when I do. A lot of the times, what do I do? I admit it, I flipped my position and I'm no longer seeing the story.

The way I did. This is the one thing that I would knock on Kramer that he doesn't do well on. He doesn't go back and said that, Hey, I was long and now I've changed my opinion. What he does is just to change the opinion and that doesn't give you the outlook that you need, because I mean, if you're just going to change your opinion all the time, Why would anybody just listen?

Right? I mean, at the end of the day, that's what it's about. That's why here on SPACs you'll hear Chris and I make opinions right on, on how we feel in certain stocks, but we also will point to the opposite look and how that could be against like Chris right now, talking about how yet QS looks great. It looks awesome.

But at the same time, where's the revenue. Where's the catalyst. Where's the movement. That's what we're about here. That's what we want to be different than CNBC. And not just try to get you guys. Oh yeah. Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. I mean, I could say that a million times, but that doesn't help anybody.

We want you guys to learn from the way that we go about it. And that's what it's all about. So smash that thumbs up. Let's keep it going in the watch lists here. I want to go to two more and then we're going to go into our Nova. Oh, November calendar here. Anyone that stands out to you, Chris? Um, I'm wondering if you can pull up the Ivan chart again, I'm seeing nice volume coding in, um, we're up 3% right now, again, that battery event is happening right now while we're live on this show.

So I haven't had a time to see exactly what, but they unveiled a new battery. And if you remember. When we had them on, this is a company that has partnerships and investments from general motors and Hyundai. Um, they could be a big player in the battery space and they are actually saying that their batteries are better than their competition.

Um, and I mean, based on the volume and the, the shares moving, I'm guessing that this event went over well today. And I saw a 52 week high of 11, uh, And we're at 10 60 right now. There's a chance that we could see a new 52 week high today. I mean, this is one that didn't really pop on the deal announcement, right.

Getting as high as 11. Um, I could see it breaking out and hitting new all-time highs today. So I haven't definitely on my watch. I kind of wish I would have gotten into this one before the event. Um, we did have a headline on Benzinga pro if you had Benzinga pro. You saw that headline that I helped, uh, you know, get out there to people that this battery that was happening.

Um, and you were able to catch this move, but, uh, definitely on, on my watch, what do you think Mitch, that, that move we're seeing right now in, in Ivan. So to me, it's all about the 10 fifties holding. If you see every time that we went above 10 50 on these spikes that were prior, we quickly. Right here also, you can see it here.

Uh, July 9th, we spike. And then we quickly go below a 10 60. So now 10 fifties on pullbacks is what's important. As long as it can hold that 10 50 on pullbacks. I'd be looking for this to continue in the bullish state. And as long as it can hold that, then, I mean, it could continue making a move up. Uh, one thing I do like is that it did go sideways for so long.

We're talking about. Uh, 8.1 months. So from February 26th, all the way until October 29th, it pretty much didn't do anything pretty much went sideways. And now that you're getting that momentum now is when you want to go ahead and either have been in the stock or looking for pullbacks. I in an attack, these, so to me, five, 10 fifties on pullbacks, I take a shot on it and probably risk down towards this low, which is the 10 thirties.

And then give myself a what 20 cent stop out and looking for a move back up towards 12. That's what I'd be looking for. That that'd be what we're talking about. A 15% gain, less than 5% risk and not a bad trade set up there. All right. Chris is probably going to do it for our watch list. Of course, I know that you guys are keep watching.

Lucid lucid did have a great day today. I talked about this on money, Mitch, often that it needs to trade in this one. Box the one hour trade is really holding well. So if it's as long as, as long as this one hour charts continues into bullish sense, I'm going to be still bullish on lucid for right now, that number really on the downside is 33.

We don't want to see 33 breakdown. We want it to continue in this sideways trend, then get right back on. It will give us the momentum to get on through the forties and fifties and maybe make a move towards 60. We'll see what happens in lucid. And the last one to also mentioned, cause I wanted to get to it just to make sure it's BK.

K T we've been seeing this monster is pulling back right now towards what a prior resistance. Becoming a support. When I have these hour long sideways trend, I actually look for the upside move, not the downside move, so I don't see anything wrong. If you've risked awful, let's say 30 fives or 34 nineties here and trying to get this BKK T, which was a rocket, but of course always know you're out and be careful out there.

This is the rock.

All right, let's go ahead. Let's get into what everyone needs to know. Is the calendar dates, merger votes. One are the earnings coming. This is what we go to Chris the most, because guess what? That's the crystal PDF. He has it all up here. I don't know how, because I can't get it like that. But. Let us know what's going on in the merging calendars out there and to spec industry in November.

All right guys. Yeah. So November we we've got a calendar set, right. And we have a ton of earnings from former SPACs. We also have a decent amount of merger votes, and several of them took place already this week. So I, November 2nd, we got merger votes for M O T N with AMU lint now known as dot go. Uh, SWB K their merger vote with.

Uh, KV, SB merger vote with next door and RTP, why their merger vote with a Rora. And then next week we get M G a B merger vote with embark on November 9th. That's the autonomous trucking company. And then also a vote next week, D F P H their vote with the oncology Institute on November 12th. And then the following week we'll have V O S.

Merging with we Jo, uh, on the 16th KV S a voting on their merger with Valo health on the 16th and on the 16th. L I, I merger vote with local bounty on November 18th. We D F O R E voting on their merger with P three health partners. And DBM acts voting on their merger with there and then rounding out the calendar on November 23rd, T H M a voting on their merger with pear therapeutics.

So that's what we've got for merger votes in November. I may have missed some I'm sure the chat will let me know. Those were the ones that I had on my campus. And then turning to earnings. I mean, this is a huge huge month for earnings from spam. I can't stress that enough. Right. And especially with specs, being hot people getting back into former specs, this is the time that could really shine on this industry and these great companies that went public via spec.

So starting off tomorrow, we have a Nicola MP material. Velodyne P a E and blue owl capital. And the big one for me is MP materials. You know, they got that short report out and they said that they will, they will issue their earnings on the. And they will issue a response to that short report. So MP materials is definitely the one.

Um, you know, that I have my eyes on tomorrow. Um, I expect strong earnings from them. I also expect a strong response to that short report. Um, but we will see again if they disappoint with earnings or if they can't, you know, rebuttal against all the short. We could see a bit of a downtrend. Um, you know, this one has actually fared pretty strongly since that short report and came back to life.

So, uh, M P the big one I'm watching tomorrow. And then on Friday, of course, giraffe, kinks, um, D K N G uh, match. I mean, DraftKings, we we'd talk about sports betting. And the thing that I saw yesterday, um, fan duel, parent company, flutter entertaining. They said that every Sunday right now during the NFL season is like super bowl, 2021 for them in terms of batting handle, that is a strong statement.

And it makes me think that these sports betting companies. Uh, I mean, have a strong couple months during the NFL season ahead of them. I mean, did you, did you see that from, from flutter? What a comment? I mean, the super bowl is like the ultimate event and now that's happening every Sunday, literally. Um, but definitely guys, I want to hear here, let's take a little poll here.

You guys press one in the chat. If you've taken a sports bet in the last year. So from, let's say, uh, November of 2020 until right now, November. Have you taken any sports bet? I would love to hear the chat. I'm definitely a lot of wine. I put a one in the chat. I can only hit one one time, I guess, but, uh, but definitely I wanted to see that because that tells us right Chris, the consumers we can learn from our chat.

How is it for our chat? Is there anybody that did it take. I would love to hear that. You know what I mean? Put the two, if you didn't take a bet or put a three, if you're not the betting type, that could be also a thing. So, Hey, I'll tell you one thing you guys know I'm a degenerate gambler. I can't help myself on the weekends, Chris.

I can't. I know. And yeah, you got, you got Kendra duke in the chat saying love them, teasers. I mean, yeah, there there's promo money. There's teasers. There's all kinds of ways, you know? Uh, all we do have some twos and we've got a three. Um, I'm curious if the people putting twos and threes. You know, or do you just not like sports betting, which again, nothing wrong with that.

Or are some of you in states that haven't legalized yet? Um, so if anyone out there is in a state like New York that hasn't fully legalized, uh, let us know in what state is it? Um, I'm surprised to see so many twos, you know, tell the truth though. I thought I was going to see less. Now, one thing I will say, and for you guys that are too.

Look into the, all the free money out there. Just gone give you a little. You could maybe be using that for different reasons. Pull like me, try to get as much free money as you can where they're handed out. I'll take it. Let's just say that. Let's keep going guys. Let's get into some other ones. I know that we got stuck there on K and G put that the chat loved it.

You could tell, uh, don't have time. One guy said I'm a bookie. Yeah, I guess that's why rock star will stay away from you. Oh man. But yeah, you got candida here. Kelly being mentioned, Washington, Ohio, Ohio is close. I think Ohio is getting closer, so, yep. Yeah. An options to prosper in the chat, how to get free money.

So if you're in a state that has legalized sports betting, uh, look up sports betting promotions, and you will find. Articles and promotions on, you know, the, the sports betting companies, you know, offering free money, right. And some of them give you free money. Some of them it's a sign up bonus, right? If you deposit 25, You get, you get, you know, 25 for free, um, Caesar's right.

Gave away NFL jerseys to people that bet a hundred dollars and $50 Jersey I'll take it. Yeah. Right. Chris, we weren't going to miss out on that deal. Yeah. I mean your Jersey yet. Not yet. I haven't gotten it yet, so I bet with Caesars, so got to get it. Yeah. I mean, Hey, free money is free money. If you guys want to know a little bit more about that type of thing, hit us up in the comments after we actually have some money articles that could probably help you find these promos.

So we want to help you guys just hit it up in the comments after, and I'll make sure to reply with specifically those articles that can find. Those free bedding provosts. Let's go ahead. Let's keep moving forward. What's up next? Yeah. And then, I mean, match next week is shaping up to be a huge one too. We have Clover health on November 8th, CLO V and Clover.

Of course that's a popular retail trader stock. Our CEO, Jason Rasnick actually recently interviewed the CEO of clove. Um, and you know, that is one where again, they've had several, uh, partnerships, Medicare deal signed and will that be reflected? In their earnings, definitely one to watch also car lots.

Next week on the eighth, we saw the run that car got right car with Avis. Right. And car lots was a sympathy play off of that yesterday. But the last time they reported earnings, their earnings were not very strong. Right. They said that one of their key suppliers. Well, that was hurting their business. So I would look to see what lats has to say, um, because that could be a runner based on the car move, or it could be a huge decliner if they're still seeing the supply issues.

I, November 10th, we have a huge day, right? We have, um, earnings from, I mean, some of the biggest ones out there we've got 23 and me, we've got Proterra, we've got HIMS and hers app harvest, uh, highly. Mark box. So five tattooed chef. And then the two, I would mention Mets. We talked about them in headlines, open door, ope, N an open OPA D they both report earnings on November 10th.

And you heard me say the headline, right? Was that Zillow, Zillow is getting out of the home buying and selling. So this could mean two things, right? It could either mean that that industry is so tough and open and open, you know, it may hurt them. Right. As that industry sees some, some headwinds or it could mean that they see a positive because Zillow a competitive.

It's getting out of the market. We did see open shares up significantly last night on the Zillow news. They did pull back this morning now up though on the day, um, I think open we'll be pretty vocal and honest about what this means for them. And I think we could see a lift in open based on comments about Zillow, Mitch.

What do you think? The, the open and OPEC off of the Zillow news, I mean, is this. Positive a negative or a TBD to be determined.

You know, one thing that I'm going to be watching is just, you know, op-ed really, to me has. Like brought that marketing, brought that drive, brought that name recognition. I know they're trying to get their business off the ground and that's probably why, um, you know, they're just not trying to spend really heavily on marketing.

I myself has gone after Rascoff I can't get them on guys. I've tried. So if you guys want to hit up Rascoff and be like, yo, come on, specs attack, man. They, they want you to. Uh, I myself have been going after this company for a while. Remember Chris, this was one that I've talked about. Yeah. A long, long time.

Um, you know, and with that being said, yeah, I mean, Rascoff, he's a well-known name and he's got good, uh, history in the industry, but yeah, offer pat, I just don't think has that brand awareness, uh, I think the big thing was Zillow thought that they had that brand awareness, right? Because people use their service right.

For, you know, estimates on how much a house is worth. Well, then they decided they were going to buy and sell homes. But there also are some articles out there. And again, I don't know if they're true or not. And if you've seen these Mitch that they were, you know, kind of gaming their system and they were buying up a bunch of houses in neighborhoods at a time, and it was boosting the price that then they were able to, you know, flip them for a higher profit.

And again, That's all speculation, but that could have hurt Zillow's brand in terms of selling. Um, but yeah, I'm really curious to see if open door, you know, they're going to get asked about it in Q and a, right. What does Zillow's exit mean for you? And I'm curious to hear if they address it in their prepared remarks, or if they wait until Q.

That will definitely pay attention to it. Uh, Chris, I don't know if we miss some, I think we might've skipped 11 dine. Did we skip 11 nine? Might've skipped 11 nine. Uh, I just want to catch everybody out. 11 nine. There is a bunch on 11, nine as well. Let me touch those days. There you go. I put them up right here so we could touch those dates starting with N G.

Oh, no, that's the vote here. Let me, let me get it up here. So I'm seeing a reservoir media latch, Canno health stem Taboola catapults K PLT could be one to watch, right? Buy now pay later. Affirm had, you know, strong earnings and then also Velo 3d match. They report on the ninth VLD. And this could be a run into the report.

Also remember that that could be something that ever seen. One that I liked that I think is going to come back DMS. But the early offs down towards the bottom has a nice bottoming here to $6. This is a chart that actually was doing really well, but it has retraced massively over the last couple of months.

I think this one could pop back up over seven. We'll see what happens with the yearnings that's DMS, digital media solutions, and that's also on the ninth. All right, let's skip down now. Now we can go a little bit further. We can go into the 11th here. Let's touch some of those five and 11 another, a decent sized day.

Right. We have Berkshire grey lion, electric Astro space. Weedmaps Luminar um, so you know, some big hitters there. Right. And I, I, I like a lot of these lion electrics, the one that I own shares of, and I really want to hear an update right. On their buses. How many did they make? How many did they deliver? And, and weed maps.

Right. We talked about Weedmaps at the cannabis conference, you know, uh, how is their business fairing? Um, so I'll be really curious on this day to, to see what some of these companies have to say. And then also up on screen there on the 12th factory reports, I mean, that's been a huge flyer, right? BKK T are they going to give us enough information and earnings to justify the, the big move on that, uh, partnership with.

Yeah, it's something definitely to watch it. I see it keep holding. It still looks interesting to me there, uh, maps, that chart looks interesting to me for swing traders. Uh, reason why you're seeing bottoming action multiple times, and then you're seeing right now. These levels or coexisting with 12, 12 being a support there.

That's what you could go off of. If it doesn't hold there. Of course it could come back down to 10, but we'll see how the earnings come out and maps. And I think you could see some lift in this stock going into next year, but we'll definitely keep on watch for maps as it is a technology. And the cannabis industry.

All right. Let's keep going. What are the ones we got on the list, Chris? Thanks. We're down towards the 15th of November. Yeah. And 11, 15, another big hitter day. Right. This one's been circled on my calendar and I don't even think I have all the companies listed here, but the big ones. Rocket lab beach, body, desktop metal, butterfly networks, and lucid crew.

I mean, huge, huge day for former specs. Uh, I own lucid shares. Of course, rocket lab is when I called out at the start of this month. I really like it in November. They have earnings and they have to launch windows opening this month, as we know, base stocks, right? Space stocks move based on launch windows and launches.

To me, rocket lab is set up for success in November. The question is, will they be successful with those launches or could they see a setback? They did have a failed launch before, um, which we saw shares fall on, but, uh, I'm liking that one. So, uh, November 15th, the big day, DM almost to nine today. Nine would put me up about 20% on the name.

Uh, so those people that keeps talking about how you can't make returns in specs. Let me just say that, uh, it's all about the right timing. If you don't time it right then. Yeah. You probably going to get caught holding a bag, but if you're. You'll cut that bag and wait for the stock to come back and you'll be able to make your gain on it.

And this is why I talk about how you always gotta know when to cut it and then know when the stock's coming back, give yourself an opportunity. What did I do in DM? I gave myself like three weeks at 7 65 and we're ready to add the position because it wasn't a full position. I only took a third of my full position and was looking to add if it went down to six 16, If it went down to 5 65, and this is the approach that I took that I think helped me get through that time when it did click down to 6 75, but then right back up through that level.

And so this is how I like to attack these, especially if you're trying to catch the bottom. Uh, we'll see if these can continue to move another one that I tried to catch the bottom is. Um, in this one at like 5 28 skies, I've been building up the position I've actually added to the position once. Why?

Because I keep seeing bottoming action near the same level five, fifteens five 20 fives. So that's why I'm adding down there. I'm trying to keep my average somewhere in this area, but at the same time, I don't mind adding because it looking strong, especially if we can get back towards six and then the earnings come out or the mile of, uh, the mile bike releases, some kind of steady.

They can instantly have this one right back up there. So I'm taking my shot and body. We'll see what happens with this one. And last one that I'd leave off with is be fly. Be fly is an interesting one because it's come out of the headlines. And I think this is the times when you could get an opportunity to get into a stock that has a huge potential upside.

Not only. For the stock itself, but also for a kind of humanity within itself. I mean, bee fly is an interesting product could be used in space, was used on space X. So I mean, if it can be used in space, at least I think the functionality of there exists. Right, Chris. So I'm going to be watching this one, like the bottoming action, multiple bottoms.

What do we always talk about three or four bottoms? This is one I actually might swing trade into and that's before. All right, Chris is going to do it for our calendar. We're at 1202. And up next, you guys got an interview from fun. Yes. I said it. You might have some fun if you don't know the meme of the.

Go ahead and check it out on the power hour coming up next. Chris, anything else you want to leave off with before we get on out of here? Oh, I think that's it. Uh, you know, uh, thanks everyone. A nice lively chat today with some great call-outs on tickers and you know, the November calendar pay attention, um, you know, some big catalysts coming for, for these.

All right. Like always guys. I saw a lot of people join our stream. As the stream continued on, we started with about a hundred now have about almost 300 viewers. So if you guys could do us a favor, please smash that like, and support specks attack because at the end of the day, if you don't, we won't be around forever.

If you guys got to go ahead and support the industries that you guys want to see, continued being covered right here on. Which is the spec game. So give us a thumbs up and we'll see you next time on the specs attack. And up next, you guys will get an interview from fun. And of course, when the hype meets the stock in the power hour, let's go ahead and get you guys over.

We'll see you next time.

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/spacs-attack/donations

Episode Summary:

On Today SPACs Attack Chris & Money Mitch interview marketing company SYSTEM-1. We will also get into the TOP SPAC Stock MOVERS

Stocks like LCID DM BKKT IRNT IONQ TMC KPLT

Guests:

System-1 Co-Founder & CEO, Michael Blend

https://system1.com/

Hosts:

Mitch Hoch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/STORYInvestors

Chris Katje

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chriskatje

For FASTER NEWS and IN-DEPTH market data, check out Benzinga Pro. For a free two-week trial go to http://pro.benzinga.com/register

• Listen to SPACs Attack Archive here

• Subscribe to all Benzinga Podcasts here

• Sign up for the SPACs Attacks Newsletter here

• Get 20% off Benzinga PRO https://benzinga.grsm.io/youtube20

• Become a BENZINGA AFFILIATE and earn 30% on new subscriptions

Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.

Unedited Transcript:

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/spacs-attack/donations

Episode Summary:

On Today SPACs Attack Money Mitch & Chris get into different SPACs Stocks that have to do with Auto, Autonomous, or battery plays. There are tons of space in these industries. Let's see which one could be the next top mover.

LCID FSR LAZR QS Where is the next SPAC to RUN?

Hosts:

Mitch Hoch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/STORYInvestors

Chris Katje

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chriskatje

For FASTER NEWS and IN-DEPTH market data, check out Benzinga Pro. For a free two-week trial go to http://pro.benzinga.com/register

• Listen to SPACs Attack Archive here

• Subscribe to all Benzinga Podcasts here

• Sign up for the SPACs Attacks Newsletter here

• Get 20% off Benzinga PRO https://benzinga.grsm.io/youtube20

• Become a BENZINGA AFFILIATE and earn 30% on new subscriptions

Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.

Unedited Transcript:

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/spacs-attack/donations

Episode Summary:

On Today Show Chris & Money Mitch get into Aurora or Self Driving Technology.

Guests:

Chris Urmson, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aurora

https://aurora.tech/

Hosts:

Mitch Hoch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/STORYInvestors

Chris Katje

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chriskatje

For FASTER NEWS and IN-DEPTH market data, check out Benzinga Pro. For a free two-week trial go to http://pro.benzinga.com/register

• Listen to SPACs Attack Archive here

• Subscribe to all Benzinga Podcasts here

• Sign up for the SPACs Attacks Newsletter here

• Get 20% off Benzinga PRO https://benzinga.grsm.io/youtube20

• Become a BENZINGA AFFILIATE and earn 30% on new subscriptions

Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.

Unedited Transcript:

Hey traders, who wants to paint some candles with me? I'm ready to get into the fact game, bro. One thing I'll tell you what color is here, green baby. We're going green in the stack land. Let's go ahead and start. Don't miss your free chance to tune into bending his very own bootcamp series on November 20th.

If you're looking to dive into new concepts and grow your account, this one's for you. How's my little trees doing. Let me bring in the best tree. I have grown my man. Chris hope PTO. What's going on, Bob? Uh, yeah, uh, we, we been gone the last two days. Um, so it's always exciting right? To come back. Cause there's so much to talk about so much news.

We've got an interesting company today for our interview that I really want to hear more about. Um, it's Friday. Which as you guys know, if you've watched the show Fridays are more casual day, right? So we'll hopefully get to some ticker time later on in the show. Um, so setback and, you know, relax. It's uh, it's SPACs attack time.

All right. Now I have been having some mic issues today, so I will ask the chat. Do you guys hear me? Like, okay. I did see someone mentioned, I might have to come back. I've had to restart my computer multiple times today. I don't know what's going on. So you guys hear me with the deep voice? Let me know.

Cause I will have to restart and leave Chris here. Um, but let's go ahead. Let's get started. Let's pull the Bob Ross off our a, I want to keep the, the Afro going here. I like the fro, but the beard has got to go. All right. I'll keep the frog on though. How's that looking? Good. Looking good. What can I say, guys, let's get this party started.

Let's go ahead. Let's get into some headlines, a lot of specs moving out there. I have some of my own that I've been watching and Hey, if you don't believe the specs are back we'll, uh, I mean, you probably haven't been watching these moves lately, so let's go ahead. Let's get into those headlines, Chris, please inform us because all this hair is getting to my head and I just don't know what's going on out there.

So that's why I come to my man to let us know, take us back to the headlines.

All right guys. Yeah, a lot to get to on headlines today. Uh, up first we have M O T N. So this is motion acquisition. So the company is merging with doc go. They reported that they secured new contracts today. No terms were disclosed, but again, this company continues to expand, uh, earlier this week, uh, they reported third quarter revenue of $81 million, which was up 200% year over year.

They also said that they're rolling out a series of major initiatives and joint partnerships. And they see revenue hitting $260 million for fiscal 2021. So if you didn't know, dot go is like an, a used to be called ambulance with a Z. It is a, you know, on demand, uh, medical service company, they operate in 26, us markets and the United Kingdom.

They have license application pending and an additional 14 states have 26 plus 14 would bring them up to 40 states covering, you know, the majority of the U S states. So M O T N definitely one to watch here and then turning to a more earnings. We have better where to Mexico, uh, B w M X company reported third quarter earnings today.

So, uh, revenue was up 4% year over year. They did say that they had several headwinds in the quarter. Um, but that they're progressing, uh, you know, forward and they actually have some exciting. I don't want to talk too much about this company today. Cause actually better where to Mexico we'll be joining power hour today.

Coming up after this show for an interview, if you remember, they were on our show a couple months ago, they will be talking all about that third quarter earnings report. And then also about, you know, some new company initiatives moving forward. Remember that this is one of the better performing specs of the last year prior to today's dip.

They also pay out a dividend. So EWM acts definitely one to watch. Then we have wall box WB X to wall box, which was one of the high flyers. Earlier this week. They announced that they will provide a business update on Thursday, November 4th. I'm going to talk a little bit about the calendar later, some specs to watch next week, but keep that on your radar wall box, an update next week, electric vehicle charging company that has been hot all week.

And then speaking of electric vehicle stocks that have been hot, we have lucid El CID, which will of course, take a look at when we cover our watch list. This is the number one trending stock on StockTwits today. It has started getting mentioned heavily on wall street bats. So the company will have their first deliveries tomorrow of the lucid air, October 30th.

There was also news that Saudi Arabia is considering a manufacturing facility. Shouldn't come as a big surprise since that country's investment fund is a big investor in lucid. And then also they announced that they will report third quarter earnings on Monday, November 15th. So less than two weeks after that first delivery, we will get earnings from lucid.

So I expect to hear lots of updates on how reservations and deliveries are going. So definitely something to why. Yesterday, we had the presentation from Facebook, Facebook connect, talking about augmented reality, virtual reality. And of course, if you did not hear yet, the company changed its name, uh, to, um, Metta, right?

New ticker will be M V R S. Metta is the new company. So yesterday, uh, we saw lots of AR and VR names. Get a jump on the news from Facebook. And one of those companies that got a little bit of a lift yesterday, but it's starting to take off today is Matterport. So Matterport was on our show a couple months ago.

Um, we actually got some exclusive headlines for our Benzing of pro users. Again, if you're not using Benzinga pro you are missing out pro.benzinga.com for a free trial. Those headlines, we had out the smart. The company said, I like to think that by digitizing the built world, Matterport is creating the metaverse.

So there you have the metaverse connection. They also said that their models are optimized for Facebook's Oculus quest using virtual reality mode in the Matterport platform. Um, and then they also highlighted that they announced a collaboration with Facebook earlier this year. So the company saying our collaboration with Facebook is with their AI research in or organization.

Um, so again, Matterport MTTR could be applied here on AR VR and the Facebook name change. I'm seeing shares up 10% today now. Um, so definitely keep this one on, watch the other, uh, related spec to Facebook's news yesterday. Was M P a C um, shares had over $11 and a short lift warrants were up triple digits.

Shares were actually halted. So NPAC is bringing multi metaverse public. Um, this is a small company and I will note that there is not a lot known about multi metaverse. No presentation came out with this spec deal. Um, but this was the only metaverse name that popped up in a search of specs. So keep that in mind.

And we have MP materials. MP. I talked about this earlier this week, right. Company was targeted with a short report and MPS response. They said that they report third quarter earnings after close on November 4th, and look forward to updating all of their shareholders on the state of their business and industry.

So again, I'll hit on next week's events later on, but MP definitely on watch. They have that earnings next week, they're going to have their rebuttal to the short report. Um, and I also want to know, uh, that with that short report, I actually saw on Twitter, several, uh, Twitter users shared the short report with the hashtag ad as in grizzly research, actually paid, um, to promote that short report on Twitter with some, uh, uh, fin Twitter users.

So that's an interesting tactic. Um, so something to keep in mind with MP and then turning it over. Um, C M J, which is merging with Leafly. Uh, they voted this morning to approve the extension. So MC M J shares were also trading higher today on that news. Um, we're up about 4%. This one's gotten a lot of attention this week, uh, going from 10 to close to or over 11, I believe.

Um, you know, to keep this one in mind, uh, we talked about this one at the cannabis conference, right? This is a cannabis play, a thing behind the thing for the cannabis industry. Then MCA D approved their merger with better therapeutics will trade us BTT X today. Uh, T M T S approved their merger with next NAB, new ticker and end today, this would be the, a high redemption, low float one to watch as 17.4 million shares were redeemed 87% of the shares.

Um, so keep an eye on and, and new ticker today, and TDAC was approved their merger with the new ticker LTR. Why next week, this is one I've called out a lot, right? It's a low floater already. And also have to know 20,900 shares were redeemed despite shares trading over $14. So someone missed out on some big profits in this, by not understanding the redemption process of a SPAC.

Then we got a couple of votes for. On, uh, November 8th with P three health partners, uh, DDI max on November 18th with code air and T H M a on November 23rd with pear therapeutics and then turning to our one deal. This one was announced last night, after market closed TWN T uh, satellite company to ran orbital is going public valued at $1.58 billion.

Pipe includes an investment from Lockheed Martin. That's always a key here on the space and satellite place. So Taran is a leader in small satellites. They're a key supplier for the military intelligence community, the community and civil and commercial customers. They said that they're the largest independently owned manufacturer of small satellites in the U S they plan to launch one of the most advanced earth observation, constellation of small steps.

They announced a 300 million, 600,000 square foot manufacturing facility on the space coast of Florida. Um, that announcement came last month. It will make them the largest vertically integrated satellite manufacturing facility in the world capable of producing over 1000 satellites and space vehicles annually.

So they plan to enter the SAS business model and not software as a service, but satellites as a service. So TWN T is the ticker shares up 1% right now to 10 0 1. That was the spec deal announced this morning. That's what I've got for headlines. I know that was a, a lot to get to there again with the last two days off from the show.

Uh, uh, what do you think Mitch? I should be back in a sounding good sounding. Uh, at least, at least it seems like everything's back. I did the restart. We're good. We're ready to go. I'm super excited. I've been seeing a lot of these specs moving. It's not only lucid. A lot of these have been moving and there's, there's a lot they're going towards that 11 and $12.

And when you think about it from underneath 10, that's a pretty good return, right? I mean, 20, 30% on just about any investment, it's not going to be a bad investment. Um, what are you seeing out there? Spencer's joining us. I'm just joined. Just to say that, Mitch, yet you sound a little bit weird, but I'm here for it.

I still sound weird. Good on my end, but really? Yeah, it sounds like Darth Vader. So maybe it's, I don't know. I don't know what's going on with Mitch's mind. I just wanted to come in and tell you that man. It's like he said, like I'm here for it. It doesn't sound. Yeah, but I guess a $300 setup doesn't want to work.

Maybe it just a little bit deeper than normal. I I'm I'm okay with it. I'm here for, I said roll with it. I like it. I mean, it seems like everything doesn't want to work for me right now because I just got signed out of Google is getting hacked or something. Good job. Good show that Chris yeah. Was a lot of, of headlines.

You jammed it in there. Uh, cause you got to get to, are your guests obviously? So, so nice job, man. Thank you. I will, it looks like I'm going to leave Chris here. Uh, Chris, if you want, you can kind of hold it down for a second here. I gotta restart again, trying to fix this audio. I don't know what's going on with my audio here.

Uh, sounded like a little Darth Vader, but Hey, I guess that's the Halloween thing there, but, uh, it goes with the hair they say out there, uh, Bob, the Bob Ross hair today, but yeah, Mitch, I mean, I let's get started on the interview. Um, you know, and then we can have you, you know, join back up. So, uh, it might seem smart there at least, at least I think my audio for my computer will sound good.

Uh, so let's first do this. I wanted to put on a video for us here, so let's, let's do that. I'm gonna share system audio here. Let's check out a little bit about Aurora first so we can learn a little bit more about it. Then we'll take a deeper look and Chris we'll nail down this interview.

Speaking from my own experience, Aurora has the best team of engineers. I've had the pleasure to work with. Many of us have prior experience in self-driving and I've shipped some of the most advanced automotive systems on the road today. We've also architected high performance, consumer electronics and develop cutting edge robotic systems.

All of that experience really shows with how we work and how we develop our technology. We've collectively created a holistic and integrated approach to building the Aurora driver. And that approach has allowed us to build faster and smarter. This ability to build faster and smarter is what will propel us toward meeting our goal of having autonomous trucks on the road.

By the end of 2023, with autonomous passenger vehicles following closely behind by the end of 2020. At Aurora, our hardware is purpose built to meet the complexities of self-driving high precision self-driving software requires carefully crafted hardware to power synchronize and ingest the data from dozens of high bandwidth sensors.

This requires a deep understanding of the software architecture and its dependencies, and a close collaboration between experienced hardware designers and software engineers. We've built a deeply integrated hardware team that produces high-performing custom built products that are designed and tested.

In-house Aurora's hardware includes a custom computer and sensor suite. That's common across all of our vehicle platforms. It's includes trucks, light duty vans, and passenger cars with our hardware and software teams working closely together. We recently released an upgrade to our computer, which is powerful and elegant and has five times more processing power and additional redundancy for added safety.

Using our first principles approach with our deep industry expertise. The team leverages best in industry components that satisfy the Aurora driver needs so that we can focus on those developments and add value to the Rover driver. A great example of this is within our computer with our proprietary time sensitive network switch or TSN for short, the TSN is the backbone of our computer and stitches together.

All the sensors and peripheral devices into one common hub. The TSN uses an advanced networking chip and the unique combination of high bandwidth automotive physical layers that efficiently move data between our sensors, computer and vehicle TSM provides duplicate data packets, redundant pathways, and synchronizes our sensors down to the microsecond roars hardware team is uniquely skilled at product development.

And our business model allows us to be.

All right guys. Yeah. You just saw in that video, a very exciting company. We've got a Rora. So joining us on SPACs Ditech today we have Chris Urmson the CEO and co-founder of Aurora, that company going public via spec merger with reinvent technology partner, Y ticker, R T P Y. Chris welcome to SPACs attack.

How are you doing today? Doing great. How about you doing great. Uh, you know, it's always nice to meet a fellow Chris out there, so this will be a fun interview. Right? Chris interviewing Chris, uh, works for me. Awesome. Well, we've got so much to talk about, you know, this is a very exciting company. I think a lot of our viewers are familiar.

With this company out here, but before we dive into our Aurora, just wondering if you can give viewers a little bit of history about yourself and your experience in the self-driving space, I believe that you once worked for Google. So we'd love to hear more about your history. Yeah, sure. Thanks for asking.

So, um, I've been working in this space since about 2003 back then I was at Carnegie Mellon. I was part of the team, whereas the technic direct for the team that compete in the DARPA, urban and grand challenges. These were these robot races, the defense department put together. So we've the first two years we had a giant Humvees, a race and across the desert, the third year we had a Chevy Tahoe, uh, driving around an air base.

Uh, and so we ended up winning the, the urban challenge, which was the last of those events. Uh, then in 2009, Google asked me to come out and kickoff. What was then a super secret project with the self-driving car program? Um, I helped build that with, with an amazing group of people from, you know, the six of us who started it too.

And when I left, we had 600 something people and, you know, it's now Waymo and off doing whatever way most out they're doing. Um, then in 2016 I ended up leaving, um, spend some time figuring out what to do next and realized there was an opportunity to, uh, to build something special in this space. And that's what we've been doing with a roar for the last almost five years now.

Awesome. Yes. So turning to Aurora, you know, one of the first questions we always like to ask here on specs attack, since we ask all things, you know, specs D SPECT is why the decision to bring Aurora public bias back and was a traditional IPO also considered by your. Yeah, for us, it was a 51 kind of 49 decision to go spec versus IPO.

Um, and you know, for us, uh, we wanted to make sure that the, the, when we entered the public markets, we did that with something that looked like a high quality IPO. And so our first conversations were with the long-term growth investors. So, uh, that would come into the pipe. Uh, and we used that as a process to figure out what's the right market price, right?

And so we engaged with the T Rowe and Bailey and MSM and, uh, you know, the capitals and came to a price that we felt was, was fair for the market. And then we went and looked at, you know, the, the numerous inbound. Specs. We had to talk to us and looked at the list of what was available and, and cut that down to, you know, a handful that we went and went and met with.

And then we ended up going with RTP why? And we did that because we believed that we could align the long-term incentives that, um, you know, the there's, there's some of these facts that are out there where it feels like it's kind of a flip it and get rich quick kind of model. And what we wanted was a, a company.

They understood. This was a long-term build. This was something that's going to create a, you know, if we, if we execute well, it's going to create an immense amount of shareholder value. And so let's set up for that. And so that's what we found with the, the model of going to venture capitalist scale that the re-invent team has.

Perfect. Yeah. I mean, you hit on two key points there that I wanted to dive into. So up for some of the investors, right. That's something we always talk about here on the show. Um, you know, so you mentioned, you know, Baillie Gifford, um, we've got, uh, T Rowe price, the delegatee and then reinvent of course, with mark Pincus and Reed Hoffman.

And then we also have investments from Amazon, Uber, Volvo, and others. Can you just talk a little bit about, you know, what this means in terms of validation for your company to have these big names involved with the longterm. Well, that, that was it. Right. We wanted to help, like we were building a company to be here for the next century.

Right. And, uh, and so we wanted to make sure we had the right capital partners along the journey with us. So as I think about like, you know, who do you, who, who are really good, high quality long-term, uh, tech growth investors and, you know, uh, Baillie Gifford, uh, if you look at their track record, it's awesome.

Right. Um, uh, M SIM, uh, is awesome. Uh, Uh, fidelity, right? These are folks who want, you know, they do the deep work. They're able to commit the capital and hold it there for extended periods of time. And so those are the kind of anchor tenants we want, but then you, you're probably aware at the beginning of this year, we acquired Uber self-driving car business.

And so that's now part of Aurora and Uber could have, you know, could have, uh, partnered, uh, could have continue to invest in. It, could have, uh, sold that business to anyone. And the fact that this is a team that had, you know, a tremendous technical understanding of the problem space as a real long-term business need for this technology.

And they bet on us, right. That that was an incredibly fantastic validation for us. And then similarly, um, if you look at our automotive partners, uh, Toyota, uh, Volvo trucks, And pack our, which is the Peterbilt DAF and Kenworth brands of trucks, right? These are, these are incredible companies, right? That again, could have partnered with anyone could have invested in anyone and they've chose to invest with us.

Think about pack, or this is a company that's been profitable for our 82 years at the management team. There is incredibly capable, incredibly thoughtful, uh, and they're making a bet that that Aurora is, is the company they want to work with in the space. So we're proud of that for sure. Awesome. Yeah. And then the other big point, you know, in the investment side of things, Uh, a key point from the presentation talking about a four year lack of, for some of the investors you mentioned, you know, the long-term plan.

Uh, that's not something we see too often in spec deals, right. We usually see a six month lock up or maybe a 12 month lockup. Talk to us about the four year. Right? Why is that so important for the long-term success of a company like Aurora? Yeah, well, we, we think of it as about aligning incentives. And so the way that the, this deal was structured was for our, our partners at reinvent.

Um, there's both, uh, there's a lock and investing. And so for them, uh, the vesting is, uh, basically is price-based. So if the stock performs well, then they vest into their promote. Uh, and so they get a quarter of it on, I think, on the deal closing. Uh, and this is in the S four. So please, you know, go refer to that document.

Uh, but then, uh, another quarter of it at when we, uh, achieve $50 a share. Another quarter it's 1750 and then another quarter at, uh, $20. Right? And so that means that if the stock performs, they're going to get paid, which they should. Right. If they're doing, you don't have to creating value in the world. And if it doesn't, then they won't.

Uh, and then the, the, um, investment is further locked up. So even if we, you know, we shoot to $20 and stay there, you know, tomorrow, uh, then, you know, they're, they're locked up for four years where it rolls off it at 25% per year. And again, this is trying to signal to the market like, look, this is not a short-term flip it, bet this is a we're going to grow and create value here.

We did the similar thing for, uh, you know, the majority of our significant investors, including existing investors in core Aurora, including myself or other founders. And many of the, the big folks in here, we're, we're gonna, we're locked up for the next four years as well. And we're gonna, uh, you know, uh, that'll roll off, uh, basically 25% per year.

And again, we want to make sure that, you know, there's the, there's a. A number of really high quality specs. And then there's a number that, you know, maybe are less high quality and we wanted to help signal, like, look, we're we're in this to go win and to, to play for the long term. Definitely love that approach here.

Um, so let's dive into the business, right? So Aurora, we've got, you know, self-driving autonomous driving those terms that we hear a lot about. So we have a $9.4 trillion global trucking market. So tell us about Aurora and how you will be addressing the trucking market moving forward. Yeah. So for us, uh, freight is going to be the first market we enter.

Uh, and we look at the U S market where that's about a $700 billion market today. Um, they, uh, The big challenges that market one is a massive driver shortage, and we're all hearing about the logistics challenges we're facing in the U S as a variety of elements that contribute to that. Uh, but, but a big one is we just don't have enough drivers.

Uh, we're 60,000 short today, and we're going to be 160,000 short. By the end of the decade, what we can do with the Aurora driver is we can deliver a safe driving capability that work shoulder to shoulder with the people that are driving trucks, um, can do so, uh, w in a way where it's not limited by the hours of service that a human driver is, so can operate this, you know, this expensive.

Much more, uh, and you can get places quicker because instead of being limited to driving 10 hours, you can drive 20 hours. Uh, and so you can cover twice as much, uh, ground. And then on top of that, uh, because you don't have to kind of trade off between the cost of human time versus fuel. We actually operate the trucks at 65 miles an hour relative, you know, versus 75.

And that changed from 65 to 75 results in about a 25% savings in the amount of fuel you use. And that's great for the environment, of course, and it's good for the bottom line. So that creates a lot of value for our partners. Our model is to deliver the Aurora driver, uh, as a service. So think of it like a software as a service type business.

So we don't want to own trucks. We don't want to go in and compete with our customers. We want to actually go and focus on the thing we can do best, which is delivering the driver and enabling our partners to grow and scale their business. Yeah, perfect. That was one of the things I mentioned in the headlines.

Right. We hear about software as a service a lot. Right. The SAS business model, uh, Aurora will be using a driver as a service model. Can you just expand a little bit on that? What does that mean? You know, in terms of the financial outlook for Aurora using this business model. Yeah. So, so as we think about the model, if you're a customer that is buying trucks, what you'll do is you'll go to.

Uh, you go to Peterbilt and you say, I'd like to buy a 5, 7, 9 with the Aurora driver, uh, in, uh, on it. Uh, you'll buy the truck from, from Peterbilt and then you'll pay a roar, an ongoing, uh, you know, revenue stream and we'll have out of that will effectively cover, um, you know, some of the insurance will cover the, um, off-board data services, the depreciation of the hardware, obviously ongoing development of the driver.

They'll get a driver, a driver, or a driver enabled truck that goes out and builds their business. As we think about this, this model, um, you know, as we kind of get into the. Rough justice. We think that, you know, a truck will drive something like 270,000 miles a year and we'll generate something like 50 cents a mile of revenue in that range.

Uh, and so that means we're going to generate something like a $135,000 per truck is our, our estimate today. Uh, and there's a lot of trucks out there and because we were not owning that asset, we're, we're leaning into our partners who know how to operate those businesses effectively with it turns to really nice, um, high margin revenue, stream business for us.

We, we expect. Perfect. And then, you know, you mentioned a fleet being up first, um, or freight, excuse me, freight being up first. Um, but going forward, you know, there's also talks of, you know, the ride hail market, right? You have the Uber partnership and the investment. Um, what does it look like going forward?

Uh, additional markets for Aurora in terms of self-driving beyond. For sure. So, so we start with freight and then, uh, we anticipate entering the, the ride hailing market, uh, from there. And we're going to be doing that a little bit differently. So instead of trying to build a replacement to Uber or replacement to Lyft, we're going to layer our vehicles in or feather our vehicles into a Vuber network.

And this has a couple of really powerful properties. So first, um, we'll be able to deliver a product that's very similar to the truck driving product one, that'll start just off the freeway. Imagine an airport drives onto the freeway, takes you down the freeway, drops you off at your hotel or drops you off at the business district you're traveling to, and then return to you.

And it turns out that, you know, that looks a lot like, uh, you know, a truck leaving a terminal, getting onto the freeway, getting off the freeway, dropping off. We'll be able to do that because we don't have to serve all of the trips in a market. If you're trying to replace Uber and you want someone to actually use your app, you need to service all of the trips.

Otherwise people are like, oh, this is confusing. It's too complicated. I need to, you know, add, to think about which trip I want, uh, on which app. The other really interesting thing about this is most of the competitors in the space are really focused on the low speed driving capability. And it turns out if you look across whoever markets, a significant chunk of the trips actually require high-speed driving.

And so we'll be kind of coming into that market from, uh, from the high end. And then because of the special relationship we have with Uber, we have access to. Yeah, they're their data about the, kind of the, how people move in a city on a city block by city block kind of time of day, uh, you know, hour by hour kind of model.

And this is really interesting because what it means is as we've got our first product in the market, we can have a near perfect crystal ball that says, if I add this capability ongoing on lock, this many points of the, of, of the available market. And so we can calculate and understand what the ROI will be on each feature in a way that, you know, companies would we kind of kill for.

Uh, and so that allows us to build out that side of the business, uh, really efficiently. And as we add those features to the car, because it's the same software and hardware, that's in the car, that's in the truck. As the car gets better, that'll transfer back to the truck and then the truck will be able to go more places, uh, and kind of get to more granular destinations.

It's going, not just from terminal terminal, but perhaps, uh, Depot to local store over time. Awesome. Uh, you know, you, you hit a little bit on the timeline there for freight. Um, I know there's a slide in the presentation that shows a map of the U S right. And it kind of talks about, you know, which areas will get added first.

Can you just share with us a little bit, you know, the, the timeline for Aurora here, what key events should investors be looking forward to hearing more from Aurora on? Sure. So we're looking to, to we're working to launch our product and freight in late 23. That'll be in Texas is our expectation, uh, ly, Texas, because one it's the largest network or the largest kind of state for freight in the U S uh, second is the weather.

It's good. Um, and, and third, uh, that the regulatory regime there is quite favorable and frankly in 45 of the 50 United States, uh, if we had a truck, we had confidence in the safety of, we could bring it to market today, but the, you know, particularly in Texas, they've been very pro automated vehicle technology.

So we're excited for that. We'll then expect that to expand across the Southern freight network, the Southern freight routes, and then ultimately build up and, uh, into the, into the broader, uh, United States. Perfect. You know, when we talk, self-driving a term that gets thrown out a lot is LIDAR, right? So Aurora has in-house LIDAR technology.

Um, can you talk a little bit about LIDAR and why it's important for Aurora to be doing this in house rather than using a, you know, a competitor. Yeah. So when we, so first we're not really in competition with the LIDAR companies, right. Uh, our, our businesses to, uh, bring self-driving technology to market, uh, do that safely, quickly and broadly.

And so if somebody has a LIDAR that is more capable, that that kind of meets our needs. We're going to be using that in a heartbeat, right? Like we're, we're not a LIDAR company. We're a self-driving technology company that said, um, we just fruit for the application that we're trying to solve. We think we have a very differentiated strategic advantage here.

So our LIDAR, uh, most LIDAR works by sending the super-bright pulse of light out into the world comes back. And you kind of measure when you see something brighter, uh, bright enough that you call that a measurement. The challenge with that is one. You can only get so bright before you start damaging people's eyes.

And so there's a limit to how much power you can put out. Uh, and then the second is there's a lot of other bright stuff out there. So the sun, uh, you know, halogen, headlights, other LIDAR. And so you get some, some noise from that for a roars LIDAR first light. What's neat about it is it uses a different measurement mode is called frequency, modulator, continuous wave.

And the way you can think about this is we send this wave out into the world, the wave comes back and then we interfere the outbound and inbound wave. Uh, and that allows us then. Basically look for the phase difference between the two. And that means that we can estimate the distance from that. What's neat about this is that mixing of the outbound and inbound wave, uh, means that we get a 10 to 20 fold, uh, amplification.

So that means we get more signal with the same amount of power that means we can see further. Uh, and then we, uh, 'cause we can, uh, because we're looking for a very particular wave or a frequency or a way for them, we can basically discard all the stuff that doesn't do that. So the sun isn't oscillating in this particular way.

And so we don't get blinded by that. We don't get blinded by, uh, halogen has lights. And then finally with this measurement technique, we can actually measure the Doppler shift. So this is the way that, you know, if a siren for an ambulance goes by and you kind of hear that change in pitch, you can tell which way it's going.

Well, we can see that in the light that we're using to measure the world. And so that means we don't just get where things are, but we get how fast they're moving. And this means that we can react more quickly, more safely and drive better because of that. Love that. I mean, definitely safety, a big key here with self-driving.

So always love those comments. I want to turn a little bit to partnerships. We've already hit on some of these, um, but you know, so, uh, Pacar, Volvo and Toyota. So those truck OEM partners collectively represent over 50% of the U S market. And that's two of the top three truck OEMs. So can you talk a little bit about what these partnerships mean?

Is there any, you know, definitive agreements in terms of units or potential revenue, um, Yeah. So, so as we've built a roar again, given our focus on building the self-driving technology and working in partnership, it's been, um, let's make sure we go partner with the best. And if you look at the set of partners, we have, uh, you know, Toyota world's number one, car manufacturer, Uber world's, number one, ride hailing platform, FedEx, uh, largest carrier in the U S by tractors and trailers, and then pack are involved, which again, like you said to the top three, something like 48% of the U S truck market.

So amazing partners, um, with each of them, they're investing, you know, tens of millions of dollars. Well, with the OEM partners, they're investing tens of millions of dollars to build vehicles that are compatible with the Aurora driver that will then be able to bring to market. So, um, you know, and with each of them, it's, it's a relationship where we're helping to find the requirements for these vehicles they're generate or building the vehicles, and then working on the engineering work.

What's important to understand is that the Aurora driver is basically platform agnostic so that it can work on things from light passenger vehicles, all the way through big tractor trailers. Um, and it has an interface that we define that allows them to talk to those vehicles. So we can, we can work in, we have, I think we've integrated an eight different types of vehicles.

Um, but that doesn't mean we get away without working with, you know, we right. The manufacturer because they understand the vehicle, they have to make changes to the vehicles so that it can be compatible so that it can operate safely in the world. And so that's really, um, you know, it's just exciting to see.

And like I said, these are companies that are invested tens of millions of dollars to make vehicles that work with us. Yeah, definitely. I mean, bringing in some big names, uh, you know, on the table here, um, I want to turn a little bit to, to competition, right? We've heard a lot about autonomous and self-driving.

And Aurora, you know, certainly isn't the only company entering or that's been active in that space. Right. So what are some of the key competitive advantages you already hit on some, but just highlight some of the key competitive advantages for Aurora over some of the rivals out there. Yeah. And, and, you know, w there's just awesome companies out there.

We're excited. This is an important space. And, and frankly, it's gigantic a gigantic space. And just to put it in for, you know, kind of scale, uh, in 95, uh, when of Google had started advertising, advertising was what, $185 billion space. And, you know, Google and Facebook are like, what $3 trillion of market cap between them today, 25 years later, uh, the existing market, which is, and I'm thinking of just ride hailing, local goods delivery, and freight is five times bigger, right?

It's an 800 and something billion dollar market. And so, you know, the opportunity here is profound and we expect there to be, um, you know, uh, a number of winners, uh, you know, a small number of winners, uh, What do we, what do we see as advantages for Aurora? We see one, um, the experience our team has. So, you know, I've been doing this quite a while, help found and build Waymo for many years, uh, Sterling Anderson and our other co-founder, uh, launched model X and autopilot for Tesla, uh, drew Bagnall our third co-founder one of the top handful of people in machine learning and robotics on the planet, help found Uber self-driving car business.

So really deeply experienced co-founders that understand the space. Put around us, this incredible built attractive is incredible group of people. Um, you know, nap use who lead safety for us, uh, for seven years was the department of transportation, uh, held their HIV portfolio at NITSA. Right? So understands how the regulators think about this.

How do we engage with them? How do we help make sure that we're, you know, behaving in a responsible way so we can deliver our product? Um, our, uh, CSO was Google CSO, uh, so excited to have Gerhard with us. Um, you know, Dave who leads business development for us, uh, you know, lead corporate development for Mary Barra at general motors.

So really amazing cast of characters. And then we've got about, um, you know, uh, around 1600 people at the company today with that deep experience. So that experience means we're focusing on the technologies that will actually scale as opposed to the technologies that kind of end up in demo where, and so that I think is an advantage.

The partnerships we talked about, I just objective. I can't see a better set of partners to have if you're working in this space. And I don't think our competitors can, can match up there. Um, when I think about the, um, go to market path, the way we've architected the system intentionally they've passed the enter with trucking and then follow with ride hailing and not cede.

Either of those markets allows us to tap into, you know, kind of the $2 trillion space, which is a mobility and transportation in the U S and then ultimately more larger space globally. So I think that that go to market strategy is one that's difficult for some of our competitors to play in, um, either because of technological limitations or because of business models.

So if you're a cruise, you know, doing cool things, um, but general motors doesn't make big tractor trailers. And so you're just not going to play there. And so there's just a whole chunk of the market. So that, that the fact that we're an independent. Means that we can go and kind of steer our destiny in a way that's, you know, that, that delivers on our mission and will create value for our shareholders.

Perfect. Chris, I want to ask about, uh, M and a opportunities, right? So you made the acquisition, um, you know, with Uber earlier, you talked about, you know, a lot of players in self-driving space, right? So is there room for consolidation within autonomous driving or is there some vertical, um, you know, that maybe Aurora would look at down the road for M and a opportunity.

Yeah. So we we've been really, uh, pretty fortunate with the MNA we've, we've executed so far. And, you know, I think there's a lot of intention behind it. So I think we've now made five acquisitions. So we, uh, our first one was a small company called 70 labs where we brought in a, you know, a great person. Uh, who's been at the heart of what we've been doing in simulation, which is one of the really interesting differentiated technologies we're building here.

Um, we acquired Blackmore, which is the heart of, uh, analytics, which is the heart of our FMCW LIDAR. Firstlight LIDAR, which again, I think is a huge differentiator for us. Uh, we of course acquired Uber's business and in this space and amazing people, great technology. Amazing partnership that came along with that with Uber.

Uh, we acquired a company called hour's technologies, which was an integrated photonics company. So these are folks that basically take discreet optical components and put them in a chip much, like you'd take discrete electronic components and put them in a chip. So that's, uh, you know, the path to scalability and reliability for what we're doing with first light.

And then actually just yesterday, uh, we announced the acquisition of color space, uh, which is a group of X Pixar folks, um, again, to, to, to accelerate that. So yes, we, we think that that's. We don't have a monopoly on awesome people. So finding great people out there, bringing them in aligning to our mission is something, you know, we'll continue to do.

We do expect and solidation to continue to happen in the space. It's something that, you know, we knew was going to happen when we founded the company, right? Like any industry, you have a thousand flowers, blooming. There's a lot of great people making progress, but most of them don't get there. And so we want to be that place that people want to come and continue the mission.

Uh, and it's one of the advantages of becoming a public company is we'll have a better currency to go and make those acquisitions and continue to, to build in the way we, we expect will be meaningful for us. Perfect. Well, Chris, before we let you go, um, got some questions from the chat here at something we always like to do on SPACs attack, right?

Our loyal viewers, your potential investors out there. Um, we just got a good one from a time. Viewer, Carl. Asking. How about other machines like farm equipment? Is there any, uh, you know, interest in farm equipment, maybe construction and mining equipment down the road for self-driving from Aurora? It's certainly an interesting space, um, in general, the much smaller markets, uh, then, um, uh, then the car space and the trucking space, uh, or the light vehicle space and trucking space.

It's one of the things. So, um, we have folks that used to work with John Deere on their automation. We have folks that used to work with caterpillar and, you know, today caterpillar has haul trucks that drive themselves in minds. And, you know, I help kick that progress program off with caterpillar back when I was at Carnegie Mellon and then a bunch of the folks that are now at Aurora, kind of carried that through to, uh, to productization.

So it's an interesting space. It's certainly a place where we could see longterm some applications of what we're doing, but we're going to be focused on getting our, our core products to market. And then, you know, as we. As we have success in this, have the permission to go and expand and the places we'll definitely go and do that.

W we got a comment earlier, um, and this is what I've heard about self-driving before, right? A comment here from her, scramblers saying self-driving is great until the roads are bad in winter. You, you mentioned starting in Texas, you know, a fair weather state there. What do you say to some of the naysayers out there?

Right. Who maybe don't see self-driving ever working in states that have, you know, winter storms and other, you know, big weather patterns like that. Yeah. So, so I take responsibility for this meme. So I dunno, 10 years ago, maybe eight years ago I was, you know, doing an interview and somebody said, Something about weather.

And I said, you know, look, this is a really hard problem. We're going to focus on making it work in good weather first. Cause there's a lot of the U S where it is, and then we'll get to bad weather and, and, you know, and the answer is just like any other product. You, you have a set of features and capabilities you're going to deliver first because that unlocks value.

And then you expand them. As we design the Aurora driver, we're designing the sensor suite to be able to operate through different environmental conditions. This is why we don't just use cameras or just use radars or just use LIDAR. We use the combination of them so that we have complimentary data and complimentary failure modes, um, whether it's work, but it's not that big a deal in particular.

When you think about, you know, The, the opportunities for safety here. So I talk about, say driving through fog, right? And a lot of people do what I call faith-based driving. So they look out the windshield, they don't see a car. And so they're comfortable driving 70 miles an hour. And that's how you end up with, you know, a hundred car pile up on the freeway in Texas and the way the road driver will handle that is it will understand.

I can only see so far, uh, thus I'm going to operate at a lower speed so that I actually can operate within my safety, safety parameters. And so I think it ultimately ends up with, uh, a better, safer, uh, driver on.

Perfect. Uh, I think that's going to do it for questions here. Um, Chris, before I let you go, uh, we have a merger vote coming up soon. Remind everyone the merger vote date and what that new ticker will be for. Yeah. So I think our vote is, uh, announced on Tuesday. Um, assuming that goes positively, we would have, uh, closed the deal on a Wednesday and listing on Thursday, uh, and the new ticker will be a U R.

So we're really excited about that and, uh, you know, excited to be out in the public markets and, uh, you know, being able to create value for shareholders. So thank you. Awesome. Well, joining us on SPACs attack guys, Chris, Urmson the CEO and co-founder of a rural. Company going public via spec merger, reinvent technology partner, Y current ticker RTP, Y but as you heard Chris, just say next week, hopefully a you are the new ticker, Chris.

Thanks so much for taking time out of your busy schedule and joining us. We look forward to following the company's progress. Thanks for having me, Chris. Awesome. Uh, well, thanks again, and guys out there, you know, another exciting interview, right? Autonomous driving. Self-driving it's, it's a topic we talk about a lot, um, you know, within the vehicle space and Mitch, I mean, this is an exciting company and talk about some big investors, some big partners that they've brought along the way you heard Chris say about competition.

Right? I would agree with them. Right. I don't think there's another self-driving company out there that can say that they have, you know, these bigger names for, for partners out there. So, uh, this, this is a big one. What do you think, Mitch? Oh, we got Bob Ross back in the house. Can I have to paint my way down the street?

Because it looks like Chris is getting after it. I, one thing that definitely interested me and I don't know if I'm sounding a little deep still, but, uh, one thing that definitely interested me was that the approach of let's not be a manufacturer. We don't need to make the vehicle. We just need to get the technology.

Right. And then if there's one thing that you have heard from me, Chris has been what atonomous before the real Evie adopt exactly. It needs to happen. The consumer needs a vehicle that can push them over the edge. Right. Because a lot of us are going to be battling this decision next year. Do I go Evie?

Or do I stick with my combustible engine? Right. And one thing that can get you over that hurdle is the convenience factor of an autonomous vehicle. Let's just be honest. Once we get that, I sign me up. I'll sit in the back. I'll sit down and just kind of watch. I just took a 13 hour drive to. What would I have done?

I would have put it in the slap slap match on the way to formula. And I could have been, I could have been watching the race if I want someday, someday down the road, we'll, we'll be able to do that. Right. And Aurora is one of those companies that, that is going to help do this. Right. I mean, we all want to get there, I think, right when we're talking about commutes, I mean, the driver shortage for semis, right?

I mean, and safety, right? You heard Chris talk about safety, being a key priority. I'd love that. Also loved Krista's honesty about whether, right. You know, that was a fair comment in the chat, right? It's something people always bring up. And when you hear self-driving, you know, you see them start in other states first, and then, you know, the goal is to expand to those states, like, like Michigan here.

Right? We have snow, but Mitch, I got to say, I've seen human drivers drive in the snow. And, uh, some of them aren't very good. So that's something to think about too. So, uh, but uh, hopefully everyone out there enjoyed this interview, guys, remember to smash the like and subscribe, if you already are not a member of Benzing his YouTube subscribers, Mitch, what do you think?

Should we, uh, should we turn to the watch list here and take a look on this, uh, fine Friday at what's moving. You know, one thing that we can do is always check out our watch list. We'll go ahead and check it out. And what is. Uh, stock I gave yesterday on, at the close and have been talking about it, looking for the reversal, Chris QS.

Yeah. I put QS on my list. Right? Cause I wanted you to talk about it because Mitch, this has been one that you've been all over over the past couple of weeks. And this was the one that fell out of favor. I mean, remember this was a hundred dollars stock last year, right? It was one of the hottest specs out there, but the technology is a couple of years away.

Well, what happened? They reported earnings this week and by earnings, I mean really their financial report. Right. Cause there isn't earnings yet, but they said enough to get investors excited again, I think. Right. And then you see that turn into the chart where now we see some volume, we see some momentum and we see people believing in the long-term story.

Hey, well, one thing that I definitely have been looking for is what's going to be the next move, right? What can be the next jump up? And one of the things that I was looking for was the underlining assets behind Evy battery, autonomous charging stations. Those are the ones that I think move first QS, starting to get moving here.

I even talked about it on live trading today, before the open I told Carl out there, Carl and I were talking last night about QS. I don't know if he was able to get it this morning. I'm sure he'll be mentioning it right now. Like, Hey, while, uh, looks like I missed out on that one, but that's just how it is.

Right. And one of the things with these, Chris, you gotta, you gotta invest. It's not more of a trade. It's an investment. And taking a shot in QS looks like it's not a bad move right now has a huge gap up to fill. If it gets in this area, uh, lucid is trying to do the same thing. And we'll see if these can kind of continue moving the other big winner I'm seeing out there.

We got a highlight is a matter port, right? MTT are, I'm seeing now up 15% looks like we have a headline on Benzinger pro looks like we got a positive. Um, was it an analyst note here? Uh, let me pull up a Wedbush Wedbush setting a $26 price target. Um, so again guys, if you don't have Benzinga pro you're missing out, we add headlines out.

We got exclusive comments from the company themselves. We had Matterport on specs attack a couple months ago, and again, I got to highlight it here. Mitch Matterport said. I like to think that by digitizing the built world, Matterport is creating the metaverse. So if you add a metaverse play, Matterport could be one.

And again, Matterport has an existing partnership with Facebook who is now going all in on the metaverse. I, I think those stories right there, this is definitely wanting to keep on watch. I mean, it might be a little bit too much of a flyer today, but maybe on a pullback, a Matterport looking good match.

Yeah. You know, one thing that I did see, and I actually, we, we talked about this one, Chris on live trading and it was clear as day, this little BYU bounce right here. Nice little vivo bounce after you got that extension pulled down right. To it bounced off right off of that. And what did it do? It gave you another shot at V , right?

Boom. And then it rocketed off from there. So definitely, uh, these, these stocks when they seem strong and they get that lift, look for the indicator to hold, to show you that bull is sense. And this one's been doing really good on actually on the daily look at the daily chart. Nice sideways action. This is what you want to see that sideways action, right after a big move up.

You don't want to see it come straight back down. You want to see some sideways action before you get that next boost on up, which actually helps it when it gets that next lift because the consolidation. And we get the next movement. I know I'm still sounding a little bit off. I did like the comment about, uh, SPACs attack with, uh, Chris and Barry white was one of the comments we got in the chat.

Um, whoever put that in there, a couple more here. Uh TDAC right. It's changing the lottery.com next week. LTR R Y I did see shares dip today. Um, this is one that I would be looking at right heading into next week. And I do have a long position in these shares. Um, this is low float, so please be careful with this, but I just think once they get that name change to lottery.com and then also when they highlight what they're going to do with sports.com.

I just think this is one that's going to get a lot of attention. Um, so if this is not on your watch list, this is one I definitely want to draw more attention to. Well, uh, you see me draw in here. We've talked about these trendlines before, how long this was holding here in this spot. One of the things that I can point out is with this breakout, you've gotten what the volume to come back in so important.

And Chris looking like it's looking good. Really? TDAC ah, VW E vintage wine as another one. I would draw attention to 'em yesterday. There was a mention of an OTC Weinstock by someone on CNBC. I don't remember the ticker, but those shares shot up. Right? Because it was called essentially like the Netflix of the wine industry.

I mean, wine is one of those industries where I think once people pay attention to it, there's not a ton of peer plays and VW E I think could get some attention. Um, you know, so this is one to keep on watch as well. Love it, love it. It's looking like it's setting up looking like you had what one 10th to break down to attempt to break down three attempt to break down then right after it the next day, what did it do?

It WIC showed you a reversal candle right here, that candles so important. Now that you have that reversal, I would hold to that. And you can give yourself a shot for it to come back up towards the resistance. Major resistance is up here towards 1128, 1130s. That's where I could see it filling on up. We'll see if this one can keep moving.

R K L B rocket lab is another one I would draw attention to. Um, so going forward, they have a flight window opening on November 11th. They also have a flight, uh, later, November 27th, and then they also have earnings on November 15th. Um, there'll be launching some black sky imagery satellites to keep an eye on B K S Y two, but rocket lab, two launches and earnings in the month of November Mitch.

I mean, we've seen these space stocks before, right? Virgin galactic and others. Slight windows is a big catalyst. So pay attention to our KLB in November. Hey, like you said back to back launches. Why not keep it on a lots? Right. And we'll definitely keep that on. Watch. Um, coming up next, guys, we're going to be getting into the power hour.

What is going to be on power hour? Yeah. So BWM acts better where to Mexico, they reported third quarter earnings today. And this is a company I've talked to before here on specs attack. They're joining on power hour and they're going to talk about those earnings. And as I said, you know, revenue was up 4% year over year, but they've got an exciting plan ahead.

How they're going to grow their market share in Mexico from 20%. To 40% over the next five years. Um, so I will be tuning into that. So BWM ax, Mitch, before we go, I just want to say that next week that some of the stocks I'm watching, uh, RTP, Y who we of course interviewed today are Rora. They have their merger vote on the second and also SWB K their merger with the bird.

And then we also get earnings next week, Metro from two big names, right? Nicola, N K L a will be reporting earnings on November 4th. Um, that's always one that, that moves on catalyst, right? So good or bad. And then also MP materials on November 4th, uh, Mitch, I'm very excited for MP to hear their rebuttal, right.

To that short report. And then also to hear their earnings. Right. I mean, that's one of the big things we've been saying about this company, real revenue growth. Um, what, what do you think a MP next week in some of these other cases. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot to look out for. Um, one that I'm also looking out for the should be having earnings in early November.

I believe it's November 7th, but I'll have Chris confirmed that his body. Um, so there's a lot of them on the list that are coming up. And one of the things that we've been waiting for Chris is right. Is we always talk about it. Our expectations being met, it looks like November, November, 15 body, but that's a, that's a good color.

That mixed fitness bike. We get to hear how successful it really was. That's a big catalyst. I'll definitely be watching it a full disclosure. I did take some body. So I have been taken a little bit reason why I have heard that those sales could be potentially good. So we'll see what happens out of that body earnings and out of all of these earnings, because it's important.

Do they, are they meeting expectations is the biggest thing that investors are going to pay attention to? Definitely because with forward looking statements, what do we want to find out is that it wasn't really so much forward looking. It was more, yes, this is what we were going to do. Yeah, really. It was real all along.

It was real, not a paper dream there. So a nice call-out Mitch body. Um, so we'll be back on Monday and we'll try to lay out November, right? Um, Monday is November 1st. So we'll be going over our November calendar. And talk about those votes and some of those earnings states to watch. So an exciting show coming up, but guys, as I said, power hour coming up next, better where to Mexico PWM acts.

You don't want to miss that one. Um, so as always stay tuned and smash that like, and we will see everyone next week. Guys, as I wrapped up here, you guys are probably wondering why do you look like you look, Mitch, what are you doing? I mean, don't they say that all the time match. Oh, that's true. Right. But we won't get into that.

Chris. It's all about the Bob Ross today. And why is it about the Bob Ross? Because it's about you guys out there. We are doing a special giveaway just for you guys out there. So I want to get you guys a part of this giveaway. It's only for Benzinga pro users. So I will let you know if you're not a bending a pro user, sorry.

You're Sol, if you don't know what that is, ask for your friend to let you know what Sol means, but definitely, definitely guys, go ahead and click that link. Sign up to be a Benzinga pro user, if you haven't done so before we'll get you that two week free trial, that will give you a chance to win $1,000 in cash.

Guys you have a chance to win $1,000 this weekend, only if you're a, Benzing a pro user. So definitely sign on up guys, check it out. And Bob rock. Ross Boston, Rob Ross, Boston. I like it. You can't go wrong guys. Check out this video and we'll see you out on the power. Paysinger nation. Happy Halloween. We thought we'd celebrate with a $1,000 giveaway.

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Episode Summary:

On Today's SPACs Attack Chris & Money Mitch Dig into Aspiration & Kin Insurance.

Guests:

Interview with Ahmed Fattouh, Chairman and CEO of InterPrivate III and Andrei Cherny, CEO and Co-Founder of Aspiration (NYSE: IPVF)

Interview with Matt Higgins, CEO of Omnichannel Acquisition (OCA)

Company is merging with Kin Insurance

https://www.kin.com/

Hosts:

Mitch Hoch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/STORYInvestors

Chris Katje

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chriskatje

For FASTER NEWS and IN-DEPTH market data, check out Benzinga Pro. For a free two-week trial go to http://pro.benzinga.com/register

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Episode Summary:

On today's SPACs Attack Chris & Money Mitch going into ServiceMax, which provides a cloud-based software platform designed to improve the productivity of complex, equipment-centric service execution for OEMs, operators, and 3rd-party service providers.

Guests:

ServiceMax CEO, Neil Barua

ServiceMax and Salesforce have joined forces to deliver an unparalleled solution that drives operational efficiency with a 360-degree view of assets on the world’s #1 CRM platform.

https://www.servicemax.com/

Hosts:

Mitch Hoch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/STORYInvestors

Chris Katje

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chriskatje

For FASTER NEWS and IN-DEPTH market data, check out Benzinga Pro. For a free two-week trial go to http://pro.benzinga.com/register

• Listen to SPACs Attack Archive here

• Subscribe to all Benzinga Podcasts here

• Sign up for the SPACs Attacks Newsletter here

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Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.

Unedited Transcript

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Episode Summary:

On Today's SPACs Attack Chris & Money Mitch get into SPACs that have extreme oversold RSI and could not only bounce back but squeezed when the momentum comes back

FIND OUT?

https://www.servicemax.com/

Hosts:

Mitch Hoch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/STORYInvestors

Chris Katje

Twitter: https://twitter.com/chriskatje

For FASTER NEWS and IN-DEPTH market data, check out Benzinga Pro. For a free two-week trial go to http://pro.benzinga.com/register

• Listen to SPACs Attack Archive here

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Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/spacs-attack/donations