Barron's Streetwise - The Everything Pill

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

The best-selling drug class in history is about to get better—and a lot bigger. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If these drugs are successful at showing benefits in brain diseases, mental health conditions, or inflammatory conditions, that could open additional adjacent markets. That's something that's not fully reflected in our numbers or consensus numbers. Hello and welcome to the Barron Streetwise podcast. I'm Jack Howe, and the voice you just heard, that's Terrence Flynn. He's the head of U.S. pharma and biotech at Morgan Stanley, and he's talking about obesity drugs, GLP wants. We go v. Zepbound, that sort of thing. I will argue in a moment that this business has become the biggest profit story on Wall Street short of artificial intelligence. And there are new breakthroughs on the horizon in weight loss drugs and also some patent pitfalls to be aware of,

but they look manageable. Let's get into it. Listening in is our audio producer Emily Sumlin. Hi, Emily. Hi, Jack. I wrote a cover story this past week for Barron's magazine on what I called the everything drug. I'll explain that in a moment. This is a subject that I've written about for years. We've had Eli Lilly, CEO, Dave Ricks on the podcast before. There's a column I wrote for Barron's about four years ago on this subject where I confessed to weighing an eighth of a ton. Emily, I don't want you to be too alarmed. That's 250 pounds. Don't worry, Jack. I can't run those numbers in my head. It was a real mystery to me. 250, I looked it up. That's a pretty healthy weight for a harbor seal or a panda, but not so much for a human male, even one who's six foot four. The good news is, Emily, here's where you're really going to be impressed. I think I'm down a little over 10 pounds since then. I might have slipped into the high 230s, and I think that makes me overweight as opposed to obese. Obese is a tough label, I think, because

as I've pointed out before, it starts with O, which is the roundest and fattest of the letters, and then beast just sounds to me like beast. It's, I feel like I'm being made fun of. It doesn't sound like a very medical term. Anyhow, for now, I think I've fallen below the definition there, but it's a close call. It's touch and go at this point. Now, there are many people out there who are having a lot more success than I've had, and it's due, of course, to these marvelous new drugs, GLP1.

which I'm calling the second biggest profit growth story on Wall Street behind AI. Just take a look at Eli Lilly, which reports second quarter results this coming Wednesday morning. It recently passed Walmart, Verizon, and all of the rest of Big Pharma in profit power. This year is expected to earn $31 billion up 36%, and that's good for 14th place in the S&P 500. And by 2030, that figure could double. That would put Lilly ahead of Bank of America and ExxonMobil and within sight of J.P. Morgan. All of the rest of the big earners in the S&P 500 are AI giants. Medicine and computer chips aren't very much alike, but in this case, there are some key parallels.

Both of these are capacity-constrained markets with immense pricing power and vast and growing end-demand. With AI, the better it gets, the more uses customers find for. it. GLP ones are about to get a lot better too. We'll talk about that in a moment. There's also rising insurance coverage, new delivery methods, and an explosion of potential uses. Today we generally think of GLP ones as obesity shots. Tomorrow they might look more like an everything pill. These drugs control appetite so they work wonders for weight loss. Because of that, it's unsurprising that they have also proven useful for conditions that are related to weight and diet.

sleep apnea or snoring, fatty liver, and heart disease. But did you know the GLP-1s are also being studied for drug and alcohol addiction, kidney disease, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, knee arthritis, psoriasis, asthma, ovarian cysts, and cancer risk reduction. It turns out that these drugs aren't just simple appetite suppressants. They appear to act throughout the body as inflammatory modulators. and chronic inflammation is seen as a root cause of many diseases. That's part of why estimates for the size of the market for these drugs are exploding.

When I wrote four years ago about Lilly's entrance into the GLP1 market, that was when it launched Perseptide, which was branded then as Monjaro for diabetes and is now also sold as Zepbound for obesity. Back then, J.P. Morgan predicted that the GOP market would reach $34 billion by 2031. That figure now looks quaint. Other Wall Street projections soon topped $100 billion. This year, Morgan Stanley raised its 2035 GOP1 sales prediction from $150 billion to $190 billion.

That's from diabetes and obesity alone. That figure implies 30% penetration by then among obese Americans, which would be up from 6% last year, and about 10% penetration outside the U.S. There are several factors driving a growth inflection now. Let me quickly mention two. For decades, federal law has forbidden Medicare, which is a health plan for the old, from paying for drugs that are intended solely for weight loss.

And that changed July 1st with a temporary program that has $50 copays for a month's supply of these drugs. That's meant to be replaced by a permanent program after 2027. This is a big deal. More than two-thirds of Medicare beneficiaries, are overweight or obese. The rule change will raise costs in the short run, but advocates say it will pay for itself over time by reducing costly health complications.

Beyond Medicare, employer coverage for these medications is on the rise too. Two years ago, we were at 44% of employers. Next year, we're expected to hit 65%. In a recent survey, patients reported paying an average out-of-pocket cost of $119 a month. That's down from a month.

$196 a month two years ago. For patients with good insurance coverage cost are a lot lower than that. Hills are another big plus for growth. Novo Nordisk launched one in January. Does everyone know who that is? There are basically two big key players in this market. The early leader was Novo Nordisk.

They launched Ozempic, and for a while people just called everything Ozempic, even if it was something else. Ozempic is for diabetes, and it's a chemical called, Emily, we did have an argument, argument over how we pronounce this. Where did we come down? I said, was it sumagletide? Did Simaglitei win? Yes, I think I was saying it the way that everyone else who didn't read it,

critically said it, which is semi-glutide. So I would say, that's the language of the people. So somagliteite is called Ozempic when it's sold for diabetes and Wigovie when it's sold for obesity. That's Novo Nordisk, which is a company in Denmark. The other big player is Eli Lilly, which is out of Indiana, and as I said, they sell terseptide, which is called Manjaro if it's sold for diabetes, and Zepbound if it's sold for obesity. Okay, both of these big players now have pills. Novo launched a Wigovi pill in January, and Lilly followed with a GLP1 pill called Foundaio in April. When I wrote about these companies four years ago, as I said,

Lily had just gotten into the market, and in trials, its drug appeared more effective. patients lost more weight than they had on the Novo drugs. And there's a reason for that. We call all of these GLP1 drugs. GLP stands for glucagon-like peptide. Basically a hormone that's released in the gut, and there are receptors for that hormone throughout the body. You can think of those receptors like locks,

and you can think of the natural version of this hormone like keys, and you can think of Ozempic as a master key. It can fit in the same locks, and it can, for example, tell the brain to stop craving food. Novo's drugs work on a single receptor, GLP1. Zep bound from Lilly works on two receptors. There's GLP1 and there's something called GIP. That stands for, it is a high degree of difficulty on this one.

I'm going to tell you in advance. Glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide. So basically, Lily's drugs are what are called dual agonist drugs as opposed to single agonist. So basically, Lily's drugs work two ways, whereas Novos work one way. That's why they're more effective when we're talking about the injectables. With the pills, both the one from Novo and the one from Lilly work a single way. So Lily's performance advantage is erased. In fact, in studies, patients on the Wigovee pill lost a little bit more weight.

But the Lilly drug is more stable, which I think bodes well for overseas distribution where you need a long shelf life. We're going to get into more of this when we speak with Terrence in a moment. In injectables, Lily has 10%. taken the lead from Novo. It's got about a 60% market share. And for that reason, Lilly's stock has soared over the past five years and Novo stock has not. It makes for a big difference in stock valuation. We'll come to that too. In Pills, Novo has an early head start and a dominant market share, 85% so far. We'll see if it can hold on to the lead there. Pills are expected to make up about a quarter of the market by 2030. They're easy and they're cheap, but people

who can pay up are going to want the latest and greatest, and that for their foreseeable future means injectables. On that subject, I'll just mention two quick things before we come to Terrence, and that is that Lily has a couple of drugs in development that appear to improve on the results it's getting from its current market leader, Zepout. One of them is called retatriatide, and that one works in three ways up from the current two. In other words, there's a third hormone receptor that it targets. And one of the things it does is gives people, higher calorie expenditure while they're resting. In other words, they're burning more fat while they're sitting still. And people on that drug in trials have lost a profound amount of weight.

In one key trial, patients on the highest dose lost 29% of their body weight. That 29% is about seven points higher than what patients lost on Zepbound in a different trial. It rivals the weight that people can lose with stomach surgery. If Lilly is successful there, that drug could come to market as soon as next year. Patients there could either get increased weight loss benefits or they could get the same benefits at lower dosages, which might help with side effects. There's another drug from Lilly

that's in an earlier stage of development called Ellora Lintide. And it's being studied by itself or in combination with her Zepotide. In other words, zeppout. Allura lintide, let's call it Allora. Allura works in a totally different way from these GLP1 drugs.

But the upshot is that GOP1 drugs, a couple of the side effects, where they can make people nauseous or they can give them fatigue. And that can cause some patients to not eat enough protein or not get enough exercise. And when that happens, they lose muscle along with fat, and that is not ideal. Elora seems to specifically produce a higher ratio of fat loss to muscle loss. If Lilly is successful there and if they can combine that drug one day with, let's say, stepbound. Maybe patients will be able to take the combo drug at lower dosages that'll cut down on side effects and maybe it'll help them lose fat while keeping muscle. But we're getting ahead of

ourselves. The soonest a drug like that would probably come to market is 28 and there's plenty that has to go right along the way. But the outlook is bright and I think that's enough from me. To learn more about this subject, I reached out to Terence Flynn at Morgan Stanley. Let's hear part of that conversation now. How would you describe the place where we are now? Has growth met your expectations, gone ahead of them, fell behind them? How would you describe the uptake of these medicines and the kind of trajectory that we're on? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me, Jack. I'd say big picture. I think we're still in the early to middle innings here of uptake of these medicines. I mean, the growth has been very robust. I think what we're seeing now is kind of 30% year

over a year in the U.S. And that has generally tracked, you know, in line to ahead of our expectations. We have had estimates ahead of consensus for a while now as we think about the rollout across the U.S. in particular. And the drivers that we've been following more recently are obviously on the access side. So I'm sure you're aware that Medicare started covering these medicines on July 1st. They're now oral versions of these medicines that supplement the injectable versions. and we're closely watching a new range of indications that could come on board over the next several years here and open up additional market opportunities.

So again, we see a very robust growth picture ahead. July 1st being the day right after the second quarter closes. So we're waiting for second quarter financial results for some of these companies, including the 800-pound gorilla, Eli Lilly. What story will second quarter results tell us, and is that or is it not reflective of the broader trend? The story on the injectable side, like I said, for second quarter, has been rest of world expansion. That was the story in the first quarter that drove the big upside surprise. We're expecting that momentum to continue as we think about Lilly's rollout of Manjaro across over 50 countries. We've done a lot of work there to look at that growth opportunity and feel comfortable in our estimates.

The other thing that I think we're going to be watching for, listening for on the second quarter call will be commentary on their oral GLP1 Foundaio. Remember, this product only more recently got approved here in the U.S. It was the second oral GLP1 pill to be approved in the U.S. behind Novo's Oral Wagobe. And so we've been watching the ramp of both of those products. And I think one thing that's been encouraging to us is that they've driven market expansion. And so again, instead of just cannibalizing the existing injectable side of the business, you're seeing them actually grow the total market. And that's been consistent with how we've been thinking about the entry of these oral markets.

Novo had a time to market advantage. So they do have significantly more share than Eli Lilly right now. But we do expect Lilly to catch up over the course of the year as people become more familiar with Foundaio and its profile. They have more share in the pill, not. in the injectable. It's my sense. Tell me if this is overly simplistic. When I look at it, it looks like Lily has the better injectable versus Novo. The pill, I don't know, maybe it looks like Novo's pill might have the edge there in terms of its effectiveness. Do I have that right? And is there still room for both to succeed with their pills? And can the pills succeed without taking

away from the injectables? Yeah, absolutely. Good question. So if we step back here, the earliest GLP1 medicines were actually dosed out of injection every day. Now we're at the point where these are injected weekly. And so there's been a big advancement there. Lily's injection, Zepounder Manjaro, it's the same drug, just two different names, whether it's obesity or type 2 diabetes, actually targets a second pathway called GIP. And so you're right in that our view is the profile of Lilly's medicine in clinical studies as better than Novo's injectable. Zempic or Wigobi. So Lilly does have the advantage there in our view. They have a 60 plus percent market share on the injectable side. Now if we switch over to the pill, as you noted, these drugs are

more similar than different. And so again, here they both target only a single pathway, GLP. And so as a result, the profiles are more similar. One of the differences that some physicians we speak with point out is that with the Lilly pill, you don't have any restrictions around food and water. Whereas with Novo's pill, right after you take it, you can't have food or water for half an hour. So there are some restrictions. So again, we'll see how that plays out in the real world here. But from an efficacy, tolerability perspective, our view is that these are more similar than different. One more point I'd make is when we think about the global rollout, because remember, this is more than a U.S. story, there's a significant number of

people that have obesity around the globe. I think it's about a billion people right now. That's expected to double to two billion by 2050. And one advantage of Lilly's medicine is it's a true small molecule pill. So Lilly can scale that very effectively to large quantities and hence large numbers of people. Novo has a peptide pill. And so it is more challenging to scale that because you need to make a lot more drug substance to meet the number of potential people that would be on that medicine. So we think Lilly does have an advantage on the rest of world side over Novo. I have seen Wall Street forecast that somewhere around the end of the decade, that company is generating maybe around $50 billion a year in cash, which is just seems like

a preposterous sum for a drug maker. And I can imagine that that gives you a humongous competitive advantage when it comes to funding research, buying things for your pipeline and so forth. So I can certainly see, you know, the case for Lilly. Is there, what else out there do you like among the companies that compete with Lilly or any of the smaller ones that are developing things? What do you like? The other one we're overweight rated is Structure Therapeutics, GPCR. This company has an oral GLP1 medicine that's entering phase three development as well. So that would be a competitor to Lilly's Foundao or Novo's Oral Wagovi. It is a true small molecule. So much easier to scale, more similar to Lilly's Foundaio. The company also, interestingly enough,

on the back of what we were just talking about, has an oral amylin pill as well. They're one of the leaders there with an oral amylin. So Lily's Allora is an injectable product once weekly. Structure has an oral amylin pill that's an early stage development. And so that's another part of the investment thesis that's pretty interesting because as we talked about, companies are looking at various combinations of different pathways. And so structure has one of the leading oral medicines in that space. So that's another important value driver. So those are the two we are overweight rated on. The other two that I'll mention just because I think it's worth noting in the context of the broader evolution of the obesity market is many of the medicines, as we talked

about, are injected weekly or their dose orally once a day. Two companies I cover where we're equal rate rated are Amgen and Pfizer. They both are working on products injectables that could be dose potentially monthly. And so that's another direction that the future field might go in is if you get to a certain baseline, new baseline weight, maybe some people might want to take a monthly maintenance option as an injection instead of injecting every week. And so that's an area we're watching closely as well for both of those companies and they're in phase three trials right now. So we're still probably 12, 24 months away from seeing data. The key question will be, not just efficacy with those medicines, but how do the tolerability profiles of those longer-acting

medicines compare ultimately with the options that we have? Because, you know, again, the tolerability and safety profiles very well established for the existing medicines. Thank you, Terrence. We'll be back with more from Terrence in just a moment after this quick break. Welcome back. Emily, thoughts so far on the everything drug? Just makes me picture in everything bagel. Anything on that bagel? Scallion, cream cheese, and locks. Really?

The tomato just ends up coming out, though. I want it, but the onion, you know, one bite, it's all gone. So I just kind of, I skip the accoutrement, if you will. That's a, that's a savory situation. I'll go cream cheese with pimento olives mixed in and then the slice locks. Okay, okay. That's about a $430 bagel in Midtown, Manhattan, unfortunately. And there will be a poppy seed stuck in your teeth, no matter what.

you do. That's right. But it's good for the economy in the poppy industrial complex. Big poppy, as we call it. We're talking about GLP1 drugs. These have been remarkable moneymakers for Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, although Lilly stock has done much better. It has multiplied about five times in price over the past five years. Novo's American depository receipts, in other words, a version of its shares that trade here in the U.S., those have gained just 11% over that stretch. And that leaves Novo at around 15 to 16 times this year's earnings forecast. That compares with close to 35 times for Lilly. So Lily is more expensive, but Wall Street overwhelmingly prefers Lilly stock

because that company is projected to double its earnings per share over the five years starting from this year. That compares with a projection of cumulative 29% growth for Novo over. the same period. Novo's ADR comes with a bigger dividend yield about 3.5% versus a fraction of 1% for Lilly. Both companies are benefiting from a regulatory crackdown on sales of knockoff drugs by so-called compounding pharmacies. Novo actually sued an online seller called Hymns, but earlier this year it dropped that suit after the two companies signed a sales agreement. These companies will not be hurting for free cash flow. By 2031, Lilly is expected to generate

more than $62 billion in free cash. That's about $40 billion more than Novo. And that money is already being spent on research and tuck in deals to diversify beyond GLP-1s. With any blockbuster drug, there's a potential for a patent cliff, a moment in the future where the drug loses its sales exclusivity, faces generic competition, and sales plummet.

That seems like a manageable risk in this case. Novel has patent protection on its key drug through 2031, and Eli Lilly through 2036. Both companies have done what drug companies tend to do in these cases. They've amassed a thicket of patents on specific formulations and injector designs, and those run past 2040. One investor concern is that if a generic form of Novo-Somagliteite emerges five years from now, it could be cheap enough to lure patients off of Lilly's Thruzepetide.

It's Zeppound, in other words. But that concern might underestimate the mass. massive manufacturing investments that these companies have made. Investment Bank UBS analyzed production trends in markets like India, where somaglite already lost its patent protection earlier this year. One generic supplier there, Dr. Reddy's laboratories, recently lowered its guidance on auto-injector pen delivery from $12 million a year to $6 to $7 million a year due to impurities and other setbacks.

UBS reckons that the world's generic ecosystem will only be able to support 25% to 30% of GLP1 demand by 2030. Anyhow, even after generics launch, many patients will be willing to pay premium prices for the best performance, like those developmental drugs I mentioned earlier. Let's pick back up now with my conversation with Terrence at Morgan Stanley. So Eli Lilly is the leader with the current general. of these obesity meds.

Novo Nordisk was the first to market. Tell me about generic competition. So much money at stake. And, you know, there are patents that expire and it's different for each country. And then there are efforts by companies sometimes to protect their sales exclusivity by coming up with new things that they can patent and safeguard. What's the outlook there? Do investors need to be consterned?

that there's going to be a patent cliff or do you think these companies can manage that? Big picture, we think what you're going to see evolve is ultimately a two-tiered market. So Manjaro, the Lilly product, we think, is going to maintain a dominant position in the branded market because as we talked about, we see it having a superior profile, whereas the semaglutide or the generic versions of semaglutide, the Novo drug, is going to ultimately expand the total volume of people on these medicines as it moves down into lower income brackets. And so you're going to see market expansion as a result of having generic versions available in some of these rest of world countries. And I think when you step back even bigger picture and think about, you know, the biopharma

industry, ultimately companies want to continue to innovate and come up with what's next, what's better, whether it's efficacy, safety, tolerability. And as we were talking about with Eli Lilly's portfolio, is they're trying to constantly innovate to stay ahead of that patent clip so ultimately you can bring new innovation and better options to patients. And so, again, I think, you know,

there's a lot of focus on this, but when you look back at some other disease areas, you do see a similar situation where generic versions will come in, but as long as there's a new option that's better, you continue to see market growth on the branded side. And so, again, we think there has been a lot of focus on, you know, is this a race to the bottom, on price, etc.

But again, as long as companies bring innovation to the market that's delivering for patients, we think you will see expansion of the branded market. Back to Lilly, you're bullish, which suggests you think that the stock should be trading higher than it is now. So you must think that investors are missing something. But it is such a widely covered. and, you know, it's a stock that gets a lot of attention. So what is it that investors, what's the most important one or two things that investors

you think are missing about this widely covered stock? Yeah, I think big picture. It's the size of the TAM as we talked about. Tam is total addressable market. That's half my job here is acronyms. Go ahead. Correct. Correct.

Correct. Sorry, getting into the weed sometimes. So the total TAM, we raised our estimate to $190 billion from $150 billion, several months ago. And as I mentioned, I think there's two pieces of that that are underappreciated. One is this opportunity for second and third line therapy. So again, there's been a big focus on GLP-1s. But as we just talked about, there's other drugs with different mechanisms coming. And those might be suitable to people that have tried a GLP-1 and doesn't respond, or maybe they have hesitancy about starting a GLP-1 for some of the tolerability reasons, whatever it is. And so ultimately, we think you're going to

expansion of the market. The oral piece is the other driver of market expansion we talked about. I think that's more well understood now that we've seen the impact from Novo and Lilly's launches on the total market. The second piece is, again, these new indications. That's something that's not fully reflected in our numbers or consensus numbers. And so if these drugs are successful at showing benefits in brain diseases, mental health conditions, or inflammatory conditions, that could open additional adjacent markets. And so that's the other thing that we think is really interesting here. And then within Willie's pipeline, again, they do have some interesting other opportunities

in other diseases. And so they're working on drugs for Alzheimer's disease, breast cancer. They're going to have some readouts over the next one or two years here that could be also pretty substantial in terms of the commercial opportunity. So again, I think that's the other thing from a Lilly standpoint is it's going to be important to see them continue to diversify the business beyond the GLP1 franchise. A lot of good stuff here. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me about this, Terrence.

Thanks for having me, Jack. Appreciate the opportunity. Thank you, Terrence. It's remarkable to think that these obesity drugs could one day be used for so many different diseases. On weight loss, we might already be seeing societal level effects of these drugs. I think I mentioned already, the U.S. turned 250 this year, and the obesity rate, which has climbed for decades, it's coming at 40.7% in one survey, and that's down a couple points from five years ago. Let's call it between a point and a half and two points. There's a lot further to go,

because when the U.S. turned 200 back in 1976, the obesity rate was just 15%. I'm not sure where I stood on the body mass index spectrum back then. I was probably sporting some husky-sized bell bottoms, but I was four, so I'm giving myself a pass. Some Wall Street analysts are predicting modest declines in aggregate calorie consumption in the years ahead. That might already be contributing to a slump in big food shares. Makers of medical devices have sold off too, partly on fear is that GOP-1s can ward off the need for many future surgeries. I have always suspected that a lot of the economy, a lot of gross domestic product in America, comes from things that get a lot of money whipping around but don't

really make us better off. Don't make us happier, in other words. Like we eat too much on one hand and then we pay for treatment for the resulting medical conditions on the other hand. And if you got rid of both those things, you'd lose a chunk of the economy, but you'd probably be happier. I always wondered what the economy would look like if you got rid of all the stuff that we shouldn't be doing in the first place. But maybe I've had it wrong. I spoke recently with Lars Hartenstein. He's the director of Healthy Longevity at the McKinsey Health Institute. And he said that if America were to achieve what he calls metabolic health at scale, that it could boost the economy by well over $5 trillion a year, 3% by 2050.

GLP1s are only a catalyst for that, not the full solution, he says. Let's close with a couple of minutes from that conversation. You spoke about a 3% increase to global GDP by some future date. I think I read in your report, it might be by 2050 or thereabouts. That's a big increase. And when I think about GLP1 drugs, there is, of course, the sale of the drugs.

There are some offsetting things. Maybe there might be, you know, one Wall Street firm, I read a prediction that aggregate calorie consumption might fall. There's talk of, the people might need fewer surgeries for conditions that can develop because of excess weight. On the other hand, I don't know, maybe people will need new clothes.

Maybe they'll go to the gym more. But 3% of GDP seems like a humongous number. What are the biggest contributors to this boost of growth? Where does that come from? Very simple answer, because people will be healthier. And if people are healthier, they can be more productive, participating more in the workforce, and there will be also less premature deaths still during the time that they would otherwise be working.

So it is really our model is entirely relying on how much health, how much health, how much healthier people will be and therefore how much more can they on reasonably conservative assumptions actually contribute to society? So we made no unrealistic assumptions or so how in aging societies all of a sudden workforce participation of older adults will be increasing or so even if that's not societally desired. So it's really people having less morbidity and therefore being more able to contribute and less mortality and therefore having longer productive lives. This is contrary to something that I have always assumed to be true about GDP. It's a cynical view. So I'll just tell you, in the back of my head, there's this voice

that's always kind of said, well, you know, GDP is only this high because we do so much bad stuff that makes us sick and then we have to go to someone else to make us well. Like we eat, we buy so much junk food and that makes us fat and then we have to go to the drug companies to get slim again. And if we ever just develop healthy habits, we'd eliminate both of those things and GDP would fall apart because all of this economic activity that leads to no good would disappear. But it sounds like you're saying that I've been wrong about that assumption that if we if we truly develop healthier habits, that GDP would rise and not fall. Do I have that right?

Yes, for sure. If people are healthier, people live longer lives and one of the biggest contributors, to GDP, they're different, what are consumption patterns of the future going to look like? People will consume, but it's an exciting question what they will be consuming. And I think there's an opportunity to imagine right now, what are consumption patterns of tomorrow that are actually contributing to more metabolic health, but also to more well-being more generally. So that, I think, is a very exciting discussion. We have not looked in great detail yet of the consumption patterns, but they are emerging.

but it's true it's a truism that people are consuming or spending their disposable income. Thank you, Lars, and I want to thank Terrence, and I should probably apologize to pandas and harbor seals for calling out your body weight like that. That was about my eighth of a ton, not yours. Emily Everything Bagel Sumlin is our producer. You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen. If it's either of those two places, you can write us a review. If you have a question, and if it's entirely or partly about finance, send it in.

It could be in a future episode. Just record it on your phone using the voice memo app and you can send it to jack.how. That's h-o-u-g-h at barons.com. Embrace yourself for a quick plug. Go read my GOP-1 story in this week's Barron's magazine. That's it for me reporting from somewhere in the high two-thirties. We'll see you next week.