Barron's Streetwise - Disney, Harley, Whopper, Whopper

Episode Date: January 20, 2024

Jack talks with a top media analyst about Bob Iger’s turnaround prospects, and covers recent developments in bikes and burgers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You look at their linear TV business, and it's going to be nothing but declines for the foreseeable future. Look at our pay TV forecasts for the U.S., and we think pay TV subscriber losses actually get worse, not better. And that's going to impact advertising, too. Hello and welcome to the Barron Streetwise podcast. I'm Jack Howe, and the voice you just heard is Brandon Nispel. He's an analyst at KeyBank Capital Markets covering media companies including Disney. Most Disney analysts are bullish, but not Brandon. He downgraded his rating on the stock to sector perform from outperformed last summer. In a moment, he'll

lay out why Bob Iger's return to Disney is no guarantee of a successful turnaround. Before we get to Brandon, I'll say a few words about, I wouldn't really call them pressing investor topics, but motorcycles and cheeseburgers, probably not in that order. Listening in is our audio producer, Jackson. Hi, Jackson. Hey, Jack. All right, let's dig into this news on Restaurant Brands International. That is the parents of Popeyes, the parent of Tim Hortons, but forget all that. The crown jewel of the portfolio is Burger King. All right, so the thing to know about Burger King and parent restaurant brands today is

that it doesn't actually own many of its restaurants. Almost all of them are owned by franchisees. But now Restaurant Brands, the ticker there is QSR, it says that it will buy Burger King's largest U.S. franchise owner for about a billion dollars. The company it's buying is called Carol's Restaurant Group. It owns 1,022 Burger King restaurants. The ticker there is TAST.

And the plan seems to be you buy all those Burger King stores, you take them over, you remodel them, and then you sell them to new franchisees. Seems like an odd strategy, but it makes perfect sense according to Oppenheimer, which is quite bullish on restaurant brands. So let me lay out its thinking. How do you feel about Burger King, Jackson? Are you a fan? Relative to McDonald's, where do you stand?

I don't know. I just, my default is always McDonald's if there's ever a choice. So it's been a while since I've been to Burger King. Yeah, I don't think you're alone. Although same store sales for the company have been on a bit of a tear. There's momentum there. There's new management the past couple of years. There is a turnaround plan called

Reclaim the Flame. They've done some training, teaching their workers how to properly greet customers, how to properly make Whoppers. They've made some improvements to their chicken sandwich and so forth. And so things are moving in the right direction. And my understanding is that they've had great success with their whopper whopper marketing campaign do you know what i mean by that no idea you haven't heard the whopper whopper song can you sing it for me i will it is not hard to remember the words the first four words of the song are all whopper so it goes whopper whopper whopper whopper junior double triple whopper that's all i know nice whopper whopper whopper whopper junior double triple

whopper and you think to yourself when where and when was the meeting picture the meeting with the executives the uh the young advertising hot shot comes in he says we've got a new plan. We've got a song. We're going to sell a lot of burgers with this one. This is a hit. Opens the curtain. There's a barbershop quartet. Right. And the chief says, OK, let's hear it.

And he goes, whopper, whopper, whopper, whopper. And the executive says, let me stop you there. So far, all I'm hearing is whopper. It's gold. You know, it might not have been that far from that at the company. I understand that there were some reservations. There was some skepticism about the campaign initially from the top brass, but the song has become, as they say, a viral hit.

It's been, you know, it's been satirized and so forth on TikTok. There's 11 million views on the YouTube video. Of just the commercial. Yeah. Play the one for us of the guy on TikTok who did the wedding song, like the song you play while you're walking down the aisle of your wedding, and it's an instrumental version of Whopper Whopper. The text says, imagine a Burger King wedding entrance.

Right. And you have this guy in a crisp hawaiian shirt on an electric keyboard that's how you start a lifetime of wedded bliss together that's uh you know that's the way to keep it flame broiled if you know what i'm saying anyhow so whopper whopper's a hit. Same store sales are growing. And there's something going on with a lot of fast food restaurants now, which is remodeling. Many of these restaurants were built for people to go inside, eat the food at the table. But these days, overwhelmingly, most orders are done through the drive-thru. So you can redesign these stores to

have better throughput at the window. You know, you could have wider lanes. You could have spaces for people to wait for their orders to be brought out, that sort of thing. You can have more digital savvy and better ability to shift workers between the counter and the window. If you do it the right way, you get a quick boost in sales. And Burger King has found that its remodels can raise sales by 12%. So it's a slam dunk. And more than half of the restaurants of the franchisee that it's buying need to be remodeled. But of course, it costs money to do remodelings, and that's where this acquisition comes in.

The parent company taking over these restaurants, it could spend the cash flow to them and do an accelerated remodeling. Then it can turn around and re-franchise those restaurants. Then it can turn around and re-franchise those restaurants. Restaurant Brands has also said that it would like to have more franchisees who each control smaller groups of restaurants. It's no longer following this bigger is better type of strategy. The idea is to have more local franchisees controlling restaurants in the communities where they live. Oppenheimer has called Restaurant Brands a top pick in its restaurant coverage for the second consecutive year. It says that the turnaround effort is poised to surprise positively in 2024. We will see. The shares go for about 22 times this year's projected earnings, which is

a fairly ambitious price, but earnings are expected to ramp up quickly, more or less doubling over the five years ahead. You can decide for yourself whether you agree with Oppenheimer's take, whopper, whopper, whopper. Whopper, whopper, whopper, whopper. It's going to be my head all month. And let's move on to a tidbit on Harley-Davidson. Not even really a tidbit. This is a half a tid. This is a tid.

This comes from UBS, and I found it interesting. They cite a late December surge in retail demand for Harley-Davidson. So you think, okay, this is the long-awaited comeback of the motorcycle. People are now flocking to stores. They want to buy bikes and ride them, and happy days are here again for the company. But they say it looks like that's not the case. They say that late December retail surge is not a sign of better demand. It's a sign of more promotional activity.

The company launched a number of promotions that UBS says were unusual for the brand. launched a number of promotions that UBS says were unusual for the brand. $2,000 off a touring bike, $1,500 off the Sportster Nightster. Sportster Nightster? Is that one thing? Sportster Nightster? Sounds like it ought to be a Sportster or a Nightster, but call it Sportster Nightster. And the interest rates at 2.99%. Some dealers were able to bring that even a percentage point lower to 1.99%.

They also say that in the past, dealers have been prohibited from using certain language on promotions, terms like sales and closeout, and that now Harley has lifted some of those restrictions. They call that a meaningful change. And they say the reason is just that there's a lot of inventory, including a lot of inventory that's about to become, as they say, non-current. They're hearing from dealers in January 2024 that are still getting delivery of bikes with a 2023 model year. So if you're in the market for a Harley, you might find that you get a particularly good deal now,

especially on a recently arrived 2023 bike. But if you're an investor eyeing the stock, I wouldn't necessarily read that late December sales activity as a sign that bikes are back. Shares of Harley are temptingly cheap at, let's see, 7.6 times projected 2024 earnings, but maybe cheap for a reason. Use caution. And this is where I tie these two topics together with a grand unifying theme, but I don't have one. So let's move on to streaming and Disney. I saw a broadband video preview note from JP Morgan Jackson. What are you doing these days for home broadband? What do you got? What are you?

You're a cable broadband guy. You're a fiber optic guy. Let's talk turkey here. What do you got? I just cut my cable and internet as well. Not like I never had cable, but I no longer even have cable internet. I have internet through my phone provider. All right. Now, this seems like a setup, like we arranged for you to say this, because that's

exactly what JP Morgan is talking about here. OK, first of all, cable television subscriptions. We know those are not going well, but it might be a bigger disaster than you thought. The losses there are actually accelerating. JP Morgan estimates a 12% decline for 2023. That has picked up. The year before, it was 11%. Before that, it was 9%.

Before that, it was 9%. Then 7%. And then 4%. It actually started accelerating right around when Disney Plus launched in 2019. I don't know if that's part of a cause and effect or if Disney just launched Disney Plus around the time when TV subscriptions were falling off a cliff, but anyhow, it's not getting any better. Now, the thinking has long been that's okay for cable companies because

as people cancel their television subscriptions, they're going to keep their broadband through the cable company. And those broadband connections are actually higher margin. They're going to keep their broadband through the cable company. And those broadband connections are actually higher margin. They're more lucrative. So things will be fine. But that's not what JP Morgan quite predicts. They predict that more than 100% of the broadband additions this year, net additions, will be from fixed wireless.

And additions this year, net additions, will be from fixed wireless. In other words, these 5G services like you can get from Verizon or from T-Mobile. Jackson, explain how it works. Yeah, basically they just give you a box and it connects to their 5G network, just like how your cell phone connects. The box has a phone number, correct? Yeah, it does on my bill, but I don't think you can call it. And it's just a, it's a static box. It's kind of like if you were just, it's kind of like if you were using your phone as a hotspot and you just set it there, right?

That's what it's doing. It's feeding 5G internet to the rest of your house. And they say that it's pretty good. How are the speeds? Yeah. The hot box is doing well. Is that what they're calling it? They call it a hot box?

No, I don't. I'm looking at it right now. It's doing well. Is that what they're calling it? They call it a hotbox? No, I don't. I'm looking at it right now. It's doing great. I haven't noticed any difference in cable, which I guess is good. And your experience, I saw some pricing on them. I saw one company had it where if you had their wireless phone service and then you got their wireless broadband, you could get the broadband for, I want to say, $45 a month. That might be with some twists and turns, like you sign up for automatic billing and paperless this and so forth. But it's pretty cheap, right? Am I in the neighborhood? Yeah, it's about 40% less than what I was paying. Nice. So you're saving money. I think a lot of people are doing that calculation and doing the same thing because JP Morgan says that all of the growth and then some in broadband connections right now are coming from these fixed wireless services, which implies that there are declines for cable broadband.

for what's called, it's got an acronym, V, a little V with a big MVPD. That stands for virtual, go ahead, tell us the rest, Jackson. Give me the acronym again. Virtual Multi-Channel Video Programming Distributor. Basically, that's your YouTube TV, right? It's like a bundle of channels, but you don't go to your cable company. You get it online. So Hulu, not the Hulu streaming service, but there's like a Hulu live TV version of this where you get your bundle of channels. That's another service. So people who leave their cable companies, they're getting these little V, big MVPDs. But JP Morgan says that it expects growth there to slow because it says the value proposition

is waning. Why? It says more sports content is shifting to streaming platforms. I don't know if I've mentioned this in the podcast yet, but in my family, we've been watching a lot of women's college basketball, including the Iowa Hawkeyes. That's where Kaitlyn Clark plays. You know about Kaitlyn Clark. Clark connects on a three. Timeout Louisville. They say you have to cover her from the time she gets off the bus. She'll drop a three from anywhere.

She shoots from the logo, as they say, from midcourt. Anyhow, so we watched those games, and they're all over the place on all different channels, and I saw one the other day, and it was on Peacock and only Peacock was on NBC, which is part of the same company. You can't find it anywhere on regular TV. You got to get Peacock for it. So so I think people who have these virtual channel bundles, which I do, are finding. Wait a second. That's not enough. Now I have to go over here and pay extra to get sports. But what do I need this virtual bundle for to begin with? And JP Morgan is saying, maybe that kind of thinking is going to cut into growth. These are just a couple of trends to watch

if you're invested in cable stocks or media stocks. And we're going to talk about a media stock right now with Disney. Is there anything we should say to set this call up? Jackson, we have talked about Disney a bunch on this podcast. We have spoken with, you know, Bob Iger in this podcast. We've spoken with Bob Chapek. We covered the park shutdown early in the podcast and the reopening and the shift to streaming and more recently, the quandary about what to do with ESPN. Here is a brief overview of Disney. And when I say

brief, I mean probably not that brief. Let's see how it goes. It's an entertainment conglomerate, right? So they do film, they do television, they do theme parks. But I think of it in terms of the contribution over the years to profits. There's a moment called the Disney Renaissance under a former chief named Michael Eisner. And people usually pinpoint the moment called the Disney Renaissance under a former chief named Michael Eisner. And people usually pinpoint the beginning of the Disney Renaissance with the movie The Little Mermaid. That came out and it was a big hit. And that led to a bunch of other big hits. That was 1989.

Led to a bunch of other big studio hits for the company. Beauty and the Beast and Lion King and Toy Story. And I think a lot of investors tend to think about Disney's prosperity or well-being in terms of what's going on at the box office. But of course, the box office has always been kind of a hit or miss business. It kind of comes in waves. And it's not a particularly robust contributor to company profits. I think of Disney as a company that has its history in films, starting with animated ones, moving on to live action. And it went through a period, and this started during the Michael Eisner years. It started really in the mid-1990s with an acquisition of Capital Cities slash ABC. It went through a period where the entire business was

dominated by television, especially, you know, this is during the rise of cable TV. That deal brought majority ownership of ESPN. For people who are not old enough or who don't know, cable TV was basically an economic miracle for the companies who sold it. Look at cable, because cable's now. Cable's cool. Cable's hot. Look at cable to entertain and inform you 24 hours a day. People bought bundles of channels, the channels they wanted and the channels they didn't want, and then they sat through just endless commercials across those channels. And there wasn't a lot of choice. You basically bought what the local cable provider was selling, and you liked it, or you had to, right? And more than 80% of households signed up for that service. And now the percentage of households who subscribe to pay TV is below 50%.

What changed, of course, was Netflix and the rise of streaming, which began the shift of power from the television distributors to the television viewers. These days, people have choice of what they want to subscribe to. They can sign up for services. They can watch them for a month. They can switch over to something else. And that's a big problem for a company like Disney. If you don't know, Disney stock price is around half of what it was a few years ago. So the company is in a funk and everyone's talking about what Bob Iger can do to get them out of the funk. But the funk is really just a comparison with how profoundly prosperous the company was. Not only was cable an economic miracle, but sports are a miracle within

a miracle because viewership on sports skews young and people watch live, which is great for ad sales. And ESPN was one of the biggest deals in sports. And the company was able to use its cash flow to bid endlessly higher for sports rights and gain an advantage over other networks, which made it a must carry channel. And then it would go out even after cable subscriptions peaked. Disney was in a position to go out to cable bundlers and say, you're going to pay us more for ESPN this year because you have to. And nobody wants a cable bundle without ESPN. And that sales pitch was very effective. But that broke down really last year in that standoff between Disney and Charter.

Things have gotten so bad for the cable bundlers that Charter argued convincingly, hey, we're willing to walk away from the TV business entirely rather than give in to these demands. And Charter won, and Disney made some concessions. So now I would imagine Disney is in a great hurry to come up with a streaming service to replace ESPN. I know it has an ESPN stream. It has something called ESPN Plus, but that's not really ESPN. It doesn't include live ESPN. It doesn't include the same sports rights. It just includes a bunch of shows, and it's very cheap. You buy it as part of the Disney bundle. But it ESPN. It doesn't include live ESPN. It doesn't include the same sports rights. It just includes a bunch of shows and it's very cheap. You buy it as part of the Disney bundle,

but it needs to come up with a true streaming replacement for ESPN as cable subscriptions fall. The problem is that the rules have changed. You can no longer spread the cost of ESPN to everyone, including people who don't watch sports. So whereas in your cable bundle, ESPN might have cost $9 a month, if you have it as a standalone streaming service, depending on how many cable subscribers are left to help shoulder part of the bill, you might find that that monthly cost for ESPN streaming is, I don't know, $50 a month, maybe more. So Disney is now looking into partnerships with sports leagues to help defer the cost of the sports rights. In short, Disney faces significant challenges. But come on, Bob Iger is back on top over there. And the last time he ran the company for 15 years,

investors got nearly a six-fold return on their money. The stock jumped 6% in a day when Iger's return was announced. It's a little over a year later, and the stock's a little lower from where it started. And with that, I wanted to speak with Brandon. That's the analyst from KeyBank Capital Markets, and see what he thought about Disney's turnaround chances. After the break, of course, right?

Of course. We got to perform a little economic miracle of our own. It's not live sports, but... It's what we got. Calling all sellers. Salesforce is hiring account executives to join us on the cutting edge of technology. Here, innovation isn't a buzzword. It's a way of life.

You'll be solving customer challenges faster with agents, winning with purpose, and showing the world what AI was meant to be. Let's create the agent-first future together. Head to salesforce.com slash careers to learn more. Welcome back, and let's get right to my conversation with KeyBank Capital Markets analyst Brandon Nispell about the turnaround effort under Bob Iger at Disney. It seems to be a turnaround in progress, or that's what people talk about it as. Bob Iger is back.

There's, I know, a lot of work that needs to be done. Give me a broad view about how big of a job is it to get Disney back into fighting shape? And is Bob Iger doing the right things? And what do you think their prospects are? I think there's secular and structural challenges in just about every one of their businesses. This is a content business that thinks they can cut their way to profitable growth. But the fact of the matter is they'll be spending less on content, quite a bit less on content than Netflix. And so

if it's a viewership game and streaming, like they need to actually re-accelerate content spend. You look at their linear TV business, and it's going to be nothing but declines for the foreseeable future. Look at our pay TV forecasts for the US, and we think pay TV subscriber losses actually get worse, not better. And that's going to impact advertising too. Plus, they just had eight networks being dropped by the second largest distributor in the US, Charter. You look at their theme park business, which is doing really good, and especially internationally should do fine. But it's more of a domestic, you know, people care more about the domestic side.

And Walt Disney World, even though we don't know the numbers, we know that Walt Disney World is declining. And that's because they're coming off of the 50th anniversary celebration. And going into 2024, Disneyland, which has been their growth driver domestically, is coming off their 100th anniversary celebration. And going into 2024, Disneyland, which has been their growth driver domestically, is coming off their 100th anniversary celebration. So it's sort of a comparison challenge in the parks business. And I would go back and say secular challenges in the linear networks. You look at the streaming business, and it's hard for me to see that business be, call it long term, meaningfully profitable for Disney.

In general, these companies have sort of failed to show that they're truly direct-to-consumer streaming services, and they've really struggled to grow subscribers. Has the consumer gotten too powerful? I mean, it seems like you used to say, I want to watch some premium TV. Here's the cable bundle. And the cable company would say,

you're going to watch what we tell you. When we tell you, you're going to have what the channels we tell you to take, and you're going to watch what we tell you. When we tell you, you're going to have what the channels we tell you to take and you're going to pay what we tell you to pay. Now it's like, I can sign onto something for a month, watch everything they've got and flip to another thing. Our consumer is now too powerful to the point where it's just a structurally

less profitable business. Well, it's structurally less profitable because of the direct customer care, billing support, technical backend that you have to have from a streaming perspective. structurally less profitable because of the direct customer care, billing support, technical backend that you have to have from a streaming perspective. The only way it becomes a more profitable, better business is because it's a global business as opposed to a domestic business.

I will say, I do think consumers got it really good for the last couple of years. And they basically voted that they like streaming. They don't like ads. They want to be able to watch their show whenever they want. And they want more of it in general. And what these companies are now trying to do, Disney in particular, is take content back, spend less on content and ask consumers to pay more. And I think that's a recipe for disaster. It's interesting to me that you talk about the dollar volume of spending versus Netflix. I've heard Bob Iger say things like, I'll paraphrase, but something to the extent that we have the best properties, the best assets, the best intellectual property, and we have a lot of

stories to tell. So in other words, they have Marvel and they have Star Wars and they can go back to that. Is that not as big or durable advantage as they believe? Do you still just have to outspend the other guy? So it's a function of the components of the spending, in my opinion. So Disney has told us they'll spend $25 billion in cash content in 24, $11 billion of which is sports, another $4, which is Hulu Live, so not their programming. And so they really have $10 billion of content spend that needs to go across all of their linear networks, Disney Plus and Hulu.

And that compares to the Netflix investment on one service of $17 billion. Disney's content is sort of nostalgic, but it's not hitting right now. Superhero movies are out. A lot of the Disney movies, whether you look at Wish more recently, did not hit, or Elementals, they did not hit. So consumers are sort of voting that Disney's content has sort of lost its luster, if you will. What happens with ESPN? So enormously profitable in the past, but then sports rights have gotten so expensive. And I hear now there's talk of them trying to cut a deal with sports leagues to maybe share some of the cost or economics going forward. What are the prospects for that business to continue generating the kind of cash that

it did in the past? I think there's no doubt we've hit peak profitability for ESPN. Going back to the comments around linear TV, which is in decline, that's going to hurt. Plus, then you have a cost base that's going up annually every year from a sports content perspective. So I think profitability is going down. I think the prospects for them to do a deal with the leagues are slim to none. Disney is one of their largest partners, and it seems, I don't want are favoring one partner over another, which would probably not make your other distribution partners very happy. I think the best chances for ESPN is to find some sort of distribution partner for the full service ESPN offering that is expected to go to streaming. And that would be someone like Verizon, right? Verizon has mass

reach across the consumer landscape in the US. They've done partnerships in the past with Disney Plus, and those were successful. The other option is, you know, even though Disney spends $10 to $11 billion on sports, it's still not enough. At 30 million subscribers on ESPN Plus today, At 30 million subscribers on ESPN Plus today, Disney would have to charge $30 a month just to break even on a full service linear ESPN service. And so they need more content. They need other NFL content. So it would be more likely that they do a content deal with like a Fox where ESPN is like this homepage and you can access all of your sports content through ESPN. You can go to Fox. You could watch NBC football on Sundays.

That's how I see it sort of playing out. What does your report card for Bob Iger look like since his return? Is he doing the right things? Are there different things he should be doing? Or is it a matter of, you know, it's just beyond his ability? I think it's a big job. I'm not sure, you know, my report card would be it's pretty average. He went in and initially started cutting costs, cutting costs from a head count perspective and getting rid of a structure in Disney that was very top heavy and giving trying to give power back to the content creators, which was always the way Disney ran the business. So I think in that regard,

that's that's good. And but then going to, you know, a lot of the issues that Disney is facing today are what he created. He initially did the Hulu deal. And now Disney has to fund, he created. He initially did the Hulu deal and now Disney has to fund an investment in Hulu, where Hulu is, it may go away. What does Disney feel that they need Hulu? It seems like it's just the platform. They don't have an option. They made an agreement with Comcast where Comcast had a put, a put meaning a right to sell. So Comcast had the right to sell the remaining stake to Disney at a minimum valuation. So like that was an agreement that I would probably assume was approved by Bob Iger. So he put them in that mess. And now Disney's talking about going to a, call it one app experience. And you see Hulu now integrated within Disney Plus. So the value of

Hulu really is the brand, which the brand goes away once you now integrated within Disney Plus. So the value of Hulu really is the brand, which the brand goes away once you integrate it within Disney Plus. And then it's the subscriber base. Hulu doesn't have any content, really. It's all the FX and Fox content that was purchased. So they had to buy out the rest of Hulu, but then they're not able to spin it off or unload it

or find a buyer or get their money back because it's just not that valuable absent the content. There's not enough value in the platform itself. Is that it? I think that's fair. Yeah. Last Disney question is, what would you have to see to become more positive on the stock? Obviously, at some price, the stock becomes attractive to you. So a much lower share price might be one of those things. Are there other signs that would convince you that, okay, they're starting to get a handle on this thing and they're turning things around or is it just, you just need a lower price? Yeah, it could be cheaper. The stock's still not cheap, even though it's came in quite a bit. It's still the most expensive media asset on a EV to EBITDA multiple basis that I cover. And I don't expect a re-rating in terms of

a higher valuation unless, you know, the theme park business is the best business they have by far and away. And I think the challenges they have are sort of comparison challenges. And so like looking out into 24, there's comparison challenges looking out into 25 when the Orlando theme parks will start to having to compete against a new theme park that Universal is building, Epic Universe. I think there's a couple of years of sort of difficult comparisons where the stock probably isn't going anywhere. But at the end of the day, the secular challenges facing that pay TV business and the multiple compression that should occur in those businesses, sports included, like ESPN, that might mean that stock pulls back more in the near term. If you look ahead, just for the overall

business, the entertainment business, if you look ahead, I don't know, five years from now, 10 years from now, about what the consumer experience is going to be like? Is it just going to be kind of what we've got now? Is there anything that you think will catch, will be surprising to consumers? Is there going to be a point where the studios somehow take power back? The consumer has amassed so much power in the streaming world. Is there going to be a great rebundling or something like this? What do you think might change about the experience long term? Well, when you say experience, I think of new formats in terms of watching. And I do think in general, you know, people, consumers appeal to go to theaters is probably not going to come back to where it was previously. We have too many options now from a streaming format. Now,

how do you change the home viewing experience? You know, Bob Iger came up on stage at Apple during the Apple Vision Pro thing and touted how that would be sort of a new experience for consumers. For me, it's hard to sort of see that. I can't imagine strapping a headset on my face in my living room. And I think the cost curve on the devices need to move quite a bit lower. But that's sort of the experience because you could imagine watching sports on one of those and basically sitting courtside or up on the glass at a hockey game or whatever it may be like that. That could be a pretty cool experience that it's, you know, it's in front of us, it seems. I used to say that the old, you know, headsets from different manufacturers look like toddler toilet seats.

And the new one from Apple looks like it's going to look more like a ski mask, like ski visor. So it seems to be moving in the right direction. But I'm not shelling out $3,500 to try out the first generation. Maybe the second generation, we'll see what happens. I'll wait for the reviews as well. Is there anything across, before I let you go, across your coverage, you're cautious here on Disney. Are there other names that you see that are really going to benefit going forward? What are the stocks in your coverage that you like right now and have positive recommendations on?

You know, this year we like the wireless carries a little bit more. The Verizon was one that we just upgraded. We have an overweight on T-Mobile. That's a space that has been everybody's sort of favorite punching bag for quite a while. But I think the competitive dynamics are relatively benign right now between wireless carriers, meaning the promotional environment isn't very aggressive. Our poos are going up. Capital spending is going down. So I think the setup is sort of favorable. And our way to play that would be T-Mobile or Verizon. Walt Disney declined to comment.

Thank you, Brandon. And Jackson, anyone else we need to thank? Well, there's Nalu the Piano Man on TikTok. This is the Whopper, the Wedding Whopper guy? Wedding Whopper guy. Are you still singing the song in your head? Will be for a long time. Whopper, the wedding Whopper guy. Wedding Whopper guy. Are you still singing a song in your head? Will be for a long time.

Whopper, throwing a Big Mac. Whopper, Whopper, Big Mac Whopper, right? Do your own little riffs. I think that's illegal. Thank all of you for listening. Jackson Cantrell

is our producer. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify. You can review it on Apple. You can like it. You can hug it. You can send it

to your Wordle group chat. There you go. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.