Why Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) Could Pay $200 Million for Drone Company

Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP) is about to pay $200 million to this little-known Chinese company, and it’s all part of a plan to revolutionize how people share photos and videos...

According to an Aug. 2, 2017, report from TheInformation.com, Snapchat is in talks to acquire Zero Zero Robotics, a Beijing-based maker of “selfie drones.”

Snap Inc. (NYSE: SNAP)These selfie drones are foldable, and users can control them through iPhone and Android apps. The drones are light enough to hold and small enough to fit in a backpack.

But Snap’s investment in drones shows just how big retail drone use will be in the next four years.

Global drone sales are expected to climb from roughly $8 billion in 2015 to $12 billion in 2021. That’s a 50% increase in sales in just six years.

And drone stocks are now sitting on a potential $127 billion market, as social media companies race to control this new technology...

Drone Stock Prices Could Climb Thanks to Potential Snap Investment

Snapchat already has the software in place for users to share images and videos. But it also wants to control the hardware to create an ecosystem like Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN).

For example, Amazon sells its Kindle, and Kindle users can read e-books, play music, and watch movies on the device.

Apple Music subscribers can listen to music on their iPhones and buy Apple’s Beats headphones.

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Is Snapchat Getting into the Drone Business?


Snapchat hopes they can create this same ecosystem with drones.

Through this strategy, Snapchat won’t be at the mercy of other drone companies. If one particular drone company becomes the most popular for social media users to share pictures and videos, Facebook Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) could buy the company.

By owning the company, Facebook could forbid Snapchat from being used on that particular drone.

And that is a serious possibility...

You see, Facebook is already in the drone market. In 2014, Facebook bought a solar-powered drone company for $20 million. Although those drones are currently being tested to deliver Internet to remote parts of the world, Facebook could start building its own drones for consumer use.

That’s why Snap is willing to pay over $200 million to create its own drone ecosystem.

But investors looking for ways to profit from this social media rivalry can find them in the already growing drone market.

Sources are saying there could be $127 billion in new wealth being created in the drone market as we speak.

Investing in Drones Will Be Like Investing in Smartphones in 2009: If you've thought of drones in military terms or just as toys, this is a wake-up call. Find out more.

And this is beyond anything Money Morning Executive Editor Bill Patalon could have imagined...

Financial Guru Bill Patalon Just Uncovered Your Next Profit Opportunity

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Before Patalon moved into the investment-research business in December 2005, he spent 22 years as a journalist, most of it covering financial news as a reporter, columnist, and editor for outlets such as Gannett Co. Inc. and The Baltimore Sun.

He has covered finance and investing, economics, manufacturing, the defense sector, biotechnology, and telecommunications. The companies he's covered include Eastman Kodak Co., Xerox Corp., Harley-Davidson Inc., Caterpillar Inc., Westinghouse Electric Co. LLC, Verizon Communications Inc., MedImmune LLC, and Black & Decker Inc.

His most memorable interviews include former U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, General Electric CEO John F. "Jack" Welch, Forbes magazine publisher and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes, and business-turnaround specialist and helicopter industry pioneer Stanley Hiller, Jr.

It was Patalon's work covering Eastman Kodak Co. during the latter half of the 1990s that solidified his reputation as one of the nation's top analytical business journalists. With his award-winning reports on Kodak's competitive travails, he consistently scooped his competitors in the national business media. His chronicles of Kodak's turnaround efforts took him to China, Japan, Silicon Valley, New York, Washington, D.C., and even Hollywood.

Along the way, he earned the esteem of heavyweights like Anthony Gallea, senior portfolio management director at Morgan Stanley, who collaborated on Patalon's groundbreaking 1999 book, "Contrarian Investing."

Patalon's ideas so impressed Jim Rogers that the hedge fund genius eagerly wrote a glowing, six-page introduction to the book.

A winner of approximately two-dozen journalism awards – including top honors from the Associated Press and the prestigious Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) – Patalon has had his work featured in Kiplinger's personal finance magazine, USA Today, and The South China Morning Post, among other publications.

Before taking over Money Morning, he served as the editor of The Rebound Report, an investment newsletter focused on turnaround stocks.

Patalon has a Bachelor’s in Print Journalism from Penn State University and an MBA in finance from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Yes, he's uncovered a lot of investment stories. And he's even been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes.

But he's never seen a story as potentially lucrative as this one...

The Next $127 Billion Profit Opportunity

In the barren, hostile plains of the New Mexico desert, not far from the Mexican border, they're building a city like no other.

A city with high rises, avenues, parks, a big-box store, churches, and gas stations for a population of 35,000, all at a ground-up cost exceeding $1 billion...

Made to look like so many other cities in America, except for one thing: people. There are none. It's a ghost town, and it always will be.

Here's what Patalon learned about this ghost town and what he believes is really going on.

Its location in New Mexico is the first key: The state scoops up tons of government research dollars straight from Washington.

And indeed, located in hardened shelters far beneath this empty city will be teams of top-secret scientists and federal contractors hard at work...

Driven by what they call "mother's milk" – the hopes of seeing billions of dollars in government funding coming their way. Not to mention the many billions more in new wealth that they hope to create.

Patalon has identified the main group of scientists and researchers behind this project.

They are quite clearly inventing a big future, with new technologies that stretch the imagination – new technologies that are about to be everywhere.

They call their ghost town "Project CITE."

It's the brainchild of the government contractor Marble Arch.

And when you learn how tight Marble Arch is with the Pentagon and how many massive government contracts Marble Arch has scooped up over the years, you know something big is happening here.

“Big,” as in “$127-billion-in-new-wealth-for-early-investors Big,” Patalon's findings suggest.

Marble Arch is run by Bob Brumley, who was President Reagan's point man for privatizing commercial space transportation. He's definitely a big thinker – like an Elon Musk with a direct line to government funding!

And this new venture of his is every bit as ambitious as space travel, with even bigger impact, because it's happening right before our eyes.

Now, as we mentioned, the specific details of this venture are not public. But after Patalon's investigation, he's incredibly confident it will involve the next big thing in tech, security, and investing.

He's talking about unmanned flying machines.

Yes, drones.

But not the drones you're probably thinking of. Not the kind the military uses to hunt down and kill enemy terrorists. Not any kind you've ever heard of before.

These are what Patalon calls "AI Drones" – a brand-new breed of amazingly intelligent, super-capable drones unlike anything Patalon’s ever witnessed; drones that can use artificial intelligence to benefit more people, businesses, and countries than you could have ever imagined possible.

But there's another reason why these new drones will soon be everywhere.

I'm talking about a big event that just happened...

An event that's blowing the lid off the drone market not two years from now... not a year from now... not even six months from now...

IMMEDIATELY.

It's happening as we speak.

And Patalon has uncovered one tiny company sitting at the center of it all. You may never have a better shot at getting in on the ground floor of such a massive new market.

By getting in early, you could profit from the potential 4,636% gain that Patalon's projecting. A gain like this would be the equivalent of turning...

Every $50 you invest into $2,318...

Every $2,500 into $115,900...

And every $10,000 into $463,600.

As you know, these kind of quadruple-digit returns are exceptional and don't happen every day. But think about it – even a fraction of these gains could make you a fortune.

Plus, this kind of spike makes perfect sense when you think about it. This is investing in the next frontier in aviation – the next great leap forward.

Patalon sees dollar signs, pure and simple, which is why he put a briefing together for you, including this investment recommendation, as well...

Now, because this is a small stock, there will be volatility. So he'll also recommend a tight buying strategy. The last thing any investor wants to do is blindly chase a small stock upward with no plan in mind. And, as always, never investing more than one can afford to lose is good advice.

Here's everything you need to know about how you could pocket $115,900 from the next frontier in flight.

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