Shares of Toast are crashing this morning, down nearly 10%, as further proof that the American consumer is in the process of being kneecapped by Fed policy. The company had just risen almost 5% yesterday amidst a "Downtown" Josh Brown CNBC tout - and those buyers now find themselves toast by nearly 5% in just a matter of hours.
In a Halftime Report "Trade Alert", Brown said yesterday he "doubled his position" this week. "Growth stocks, you want to buy them on the way up," Brown said mid-day yesterday. "This has the potential to be one of the great growth stocks". To Brown's credit, he did admit he thought the company was going to be very volatile.
"Don't hit me about this if it's down five bucks," he says, in a stunning moment of prescience.
The cloud based restaurant management software company was out with an 8-K this morning explaining that it would "remove the $0.99 order processing fee from the Company’s new version of its digital ordering suite".
In a letter to its customer community, the POS maker wrote:
"After extensive discussions with many of you, we have made the decision to remove the $0.99 order processing fee from the new version of our digital ordering suite by the end of this week."
In a sign that the consumer has all the leverage as we head into a recession and companies scrap for business, Toast continued:
"While we had the best of intentions — to keep costs low for our customers — that is not how the change was perceived by some of you. We made the wrong decision and following a careful review, including the additional feedback we received, the fee will be removed from our Toast digital ordering channels."
Where are we in the bubble:
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 18, 2023
(Bloomberg) -- Toast Inc rises as much as 4.1% to its highest level since February 2022, after Ritholz Wealth Management CEO Josh Brown said he added to his position in the restaurant software company
The company lamented: "Each and every day at Toast we wake up focused on a single mission — to empower the restaurant community to delight your guests, do what you love, and thrive. Similar to how you run your restaurant, sometimes this involves making difficult decisions on whether to pass rising costs onto our community."
In a final "please stay with us salvo", CEO Chris Comparato wrote:
"In that same spirit of transparency we also must acknowledge that innovation requires investment. Like any business, as we add new capabilities to our existing product suite we will adjust pricing thoughtfully to help fund product investments and unlock innovation that delivers value to help you thrive."
"I’d like to close by thanking you for your input and support of Toast. We can accomplish far more together than we can apart and we remain committed to supporting your restaurant and the industry well into the future."
All that's missing is a "please clap".
But hey, at least you probably didn't buy or reccommend the stock yesterday. After all, that's what CNBC is for.
