Prof G Markets - Investors Are Turning Against Data Centers (Here's Why)

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

Scott Galloway and Ed Elson break down why the data center buildout is making Wall Street increasingly anxious and examine some of the risks facing the industry. Then, they turn to Netflix’s struggl...es this year, with Scott explaining why he remains bullish on the stock despite its recent decline. Finally, they discuss Oura’s upcoming IPO, the concerns surrounding the company, and whether they’d want to get in on the offering. Subscribe to the Prof G Markets Youtube Channel  Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter  Order "Notes on Being a Man," out now Note: We may earn revenue from some of the links we provide. Follow the podcast across socials @profgmarkets Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Send us your questions or comments by emailing Markets@profgmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Support for the show comes from AlphaSpace by Yahoo Finance. AlphaSpace by Yahoo Finance is the advanced investing platform you've been waiting for. My co-host Scott Galloway is a fan of the platform. Here is what he had to say. So I have been using Yahoo Finance is my portal for finance, for I'm not exaggerating about 30 years. I think they do a great job. You can explore AlphaSpace with a Yahoo Finance gold subscription,
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Starting point is 00:01:15 Luxury sales claim based on SMP Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Hogging seats on a crowded train, not saying, excuse me, watching videos on your phone with no headphones in. Sometimes it feels like we don't know how to act anymore. What we have been seeing increasingly is people breaking rules.
Starting point is 00:01:39 Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? This week on Explain It to Me, How to Mind Your Manners. New episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. Today is number 40. That's the percentage of global container exports that come from China. Ed, this morning I decided to play Frismi with my youngest. kept getting bigger and bigger, and I couldn't figure out why. And then it hit me.
Starting point is 00:02:15 It's kind of cute, right? It's kind of cute. Dad Jokes 101. Does it make you want to have kids? Absolutely. I can see it now. Frisbee in the backyard, playing catch. I'm already very excited.
Starting point is 00:02:29 Yeah, them screaming, I hate you, and not coming home and you're up late worried. Yeah. Yeah, that's part of it, too, just so you know. Just so you know Oh, damn, okay It's not what they advertised I'm having such a nice time My son, as you've probably heard
Starting point is 00:02:45 Is a freshman at college And I call him every day to relive college I'm having such a, I'm back at college You're calling him every day? Let's ease up on that I speak to both my sons every day Wow, and maybe Maybe I just don't speak to my parents enough
Starting point is 00:03:00 Or didn't speak to my parents enough So I think what you're saying is Your parents didn't give you enough love No. It's kind of my, I think of it as my, I do it a couple, for a couple, well, I'm virtue of it right now, but it's good. I think it's more for me. It lowers my blood pressure to hear my boy's voices. But I think that, yeah, I think it's good for both of us. You're probably right. I'm probably being quite unfair.
Starting point is 00:03:27 And it's not like a long, drawn-out conversation where I give them a lesson about interpreting Odyssey for their life. It's, hey, what did you do today? how'd you do on the biology test? Bitch, you're not working. I'm paying for everything. You need to do better. And then, you know, who are they playing this weekend? What's going on?
Starting point is 00:03:44 All right. Have a good rest of night. I love you. As long as it's quick and crisp. Yeah, you're right. Because actually, I think one of my problems with my conversations and my parents is we don't talk for a while. And then each phone call, you know it's going to be like a 30 to 45 minute thing
Starting point is 00:03:58 because there's so much context that you've got to catch them up on. So yeah, maybe that's the solution, just sort of like a one-minute. check in daily. It sounds like a lot, though, but maybe it's good. Oh, it's such a good hack. It's pick up the phone, what's going on? What are you doing? It's such, it's like a, I'm serious. It's like an anchor for me emotionally and mentally just hearing their voice quickly. And occasionally they don't answer. So I just call back like an obsessive girlfriend. I'm like, there's no hiding from the dog. There's no hiding from the dog. And then I start texting them. And I'm like, you know I haven't paid your tuition yet.
Starting point is 00:04:36 Pick up the phone. Do you schedule the phone calls? Are you just spontaneous? I try and do it around the same time, so I know that they're free. I try and do it kind of like a little bit before bedtime, sort of as a – I like the idea that our conversation on the last things they do. But, you know, my dad had a similar practice with me. On the dot, every winter Olympics he would check in. That's good. He was consistent.
Starting point is 00:05:06 Every four years. Weird, how are you doing, you oatmeal savage? Who is this? Dad? Dad. I like that every four years. Maybe there's a happy medium. No matter what, Ed. No matter what. Well, I was judging at the beginning, but I think you've turned me.
Starting point is 00:05:22 I think you're right on this. I think every day is good. I think it's healthy. Quick, brief check-ins. I like it. If you wanted to do something, especially if you're a mom, just call her every day for 30 days and freak her off. won't know what's going on. Hey, just checking in. Hey, just checking in. Everything good? Yep. I'm at that age, nor I'm so anxious. When my friends call me, I'm literally like, did I pick up and I'm like, who's dad? It's, but no, just, I would love, actually, that's a great
Starting point is 00:05:52 experiment to hopefully, I imagine, your parents sound like really bright and interesting and discerning, so I doubt they listen to this podcast. But I would love an experiment. Call your mom seven days straight and don't you know don't not what's up oh nothing i just wanted to check in do that seven days straight and then report back yeah i think it's a good idea um now i'm feeling bad about how often i call my parents but that's probably a good thing something to reflect on well it's not like they gave you life um i totally flipped now that i'm the parent i'm the guilt trips I think it's good. A little bit of guilt.
Starting point is 00:06:32 It's probably pretty healthy. All right, let's talk about data centers. Let's do it. We've got a lot to get into here. Now is the time to buy. I hope you have plenty of the world of ball. The data center build out is starting to make Wall Street anxious. Last week, Oracle sent a force major notice to the developer of its data center project.
Starting point is 00:06:56 The company wants the option to delay payments. if the data center is not operational by 2028, that news sent Oracle stock down 5%. Meanwhile, several other companies tied to the data center industry have delayed their planned IPOs. One of them is SB Energy, which was supposed to go public this month. But according to the New York Times, its bankers couldn't find enough buyers at the company's targeted valuation of $50 billion. The company is reportedly waiting to go public until investor sentiment towards data centers improves, and it's not alone. Holtec nuclear is also postponing its IPO indefinitely, and Agrico, I think I'm pronouncing
Starting point is 00:07:36 that correctly, is delaying its own timeline. So, Scott, a lot of issues in data center land. We have SP Energy, which is quite literally a data center company by definition. We're supposed to go public. It's now delaying that. We will get into that in a moment. Holtek, this nuclear services company, that also, delayed, and according to the CEO, it's because the business is, quote, viewed as connected to
Starting point is 00:08:02 data centers. Agricro, which is this generation company, also services data centers, also delaying. And then the big news, Oracle sending a notice to the developers of Project Jupiter, one of its biggest data center projects, and they cited what is known as this force majeure, which is essentially this legal maneuver that is designed to relieve you from any liability, any obligation, if some event happens that would prevent you from fulfilling your agreement. And a lot of people, I think, are correctly interpreting that as Oracle isn't sure that this whole data center build out is actually going to work out. So what happened?
Starting point is 00:08:37 Oracle stock falls 5%. Blue Owl. And those are the guys that are financing the development of this data center. That stock fell 7%. So a lot of risks to the data centers, a lot of delays, a lot of red flags. What do you make of this? The only edit I would have is, I think, force mature is, like, force of God, something like an earthquake or a war, right, where you have a legitimate reason
Starting point is 00:08:58 to say, okay, this is just not normal business standard operating procedure, and I should have an out here. So the framing here, or the question is SB Energy, the canary in the coal mine. And I would argue that it's the canary asking for a $50 billion valuation on a mine that hasn't even been dug yet. And if anthropic and Open AI are having to delay their IPOs, there's just a ton of second-tier septic tank AI.com AI, you know, pretending jazz hands AI companies that are not going to get out. And this company had no business going public. Let's just talk about the numbers here, $214 million in revenue down 8%.
Starting point is 00:09:48 So that's, I'm sorry, at $50 billion, they wanted to go out of 234 sales for a company that revenues are declining. Zero operating AI data centers. This is just fucking ridiculous. This is, and I love that the markets are just gag on this thing. Only about 9% of contracted capacity is under construction. Essentially, what they're trying to do here is they're trying to get a $50 billion valuation on a PowerPoint with a soft bank logo.
Starting point is 00:10:18 And if you compare it to, I think, the closest count would be solar. it's worth about $1.2 billion. So credit to them for Adam Newman-like salesmanship, trying to elevate the world's consciousness or decrease it enough such that they could fool people into paying 234-time sales for a company that's declining. The kind of the bigger story and the more important story is this kind of, quote, quote, Oracle's force majeure.
Starting point is 00:10:47 That's an act of God clause. And when Oracle invokes forced to majeure, what they're really saying is that the god is credit markets. This isn't an existential event. This is the market saying you're out over your skis. And that is, this might be the dark fiber of this cycle. In the dot-com build-out, telecoms laid tens of millions of miles of fiber. You went around, but this is generally what happened. B2C, pets.com. Oh, wait, that's not working. Oh, wait, B-to-B, internet capital. Oh, wait, that's not working. Well, I believe in the the internet, so just invest in the infrastructure, invest in the steel in the ground. And all this
Starting point is 00:11:28 money piled into global crossing and Cisco, and those things lost, if they didn't go bankrupt, lost 90% of its value. And it wasn't that the fiber wasn't wrong. It was just early. And it's the definition of wrong when it goes on a balance sheet. The physical world is the real friction risk here. And that is 45 projects were 60, $8 billion were blocked or delayed in three months, and 30 to 50 percent of this year's capacity is facing delays. One of the most powerful entities in this AI story right now is a senior citizen who's angry and doesn't have a lot, you know, has a lot of time showing up at a town hall. So the IP window is to tell. Private markets lie and public markets don't.
Starting point is 00:12:18 Private markets can have stupid marks. Public markets have granular marks. and we'll say, no, we're not buying this. We're not going to let you wave your AI hands over this and turn this chicken shit into chicken salad. And when the bankers can't find a book, it means the smart money has stopped buying the story and wants to see actual progress.
Starting point is 00:12:42 That the case-shaped economy is a decent metaphor for AI right now or the AI trade. And that is one has cash flow like Nvidia and the hypers, and the other has quote-unquote potential like SB Energy, Holtec, the neoclouds, and the second group is about to get very familiar with the term cost of capital. Yeah, it's kind of halting that investors aren't buying this BS. Great, I like this.
Starting point is 00:13:11 It is BS. I think SB Energy is like the perfect example. Here is this sort of declining solar business that decided, now we're going to get into data centers. They say that they have all these data centers, they don't have any data centers. They have zero data centers that are operating. As you said, 9% are under construction.
Starting point is 00:13:28 The other more than 90% haven't even broken ground. They keep on talking about this multi-100 billion dollar revenue backlog, but then you kind of dig in and you realize, hold on, none of this is actually going to materialize within the next two, five, even 10 years. And then you start to realize this thing doesn't make any sense, especially at $50 billion. And that is the problem. It's like, okay, your business is a nascent business.
Starting point is 00:13:54 It's very speculative. There's a lot of risk. Let's see that reflected in your price. But they refuse to do that. They say, no, we're worth $50 billion. We're worth more than 230 times sales. We're going to go out and we're going to do this thing. And you hope that people look at it and go, no, thank you.
Starting point is 00:14:11 This doesn't make any sense. And that is exactly what happened. They were rejected clearly when they tried to shot this thing around on Wall Street. And it seems like investors are kind of, understanding what the BS here actually is and what to look for. And we're seeing it across the board here. We're seeing it with all of these other companies. It might be what we're seeing in terms of the open AI delay.
Starting point is 00:14:33 I mean, it's not totally clear why they're delaying. We know that Sam Altman said that he didn't think that it was the right time. But I think probably what he's realized is we're in an era where investors are actually quite discerning at this point. They're not just going to gobble up your BS no matter what. And I think there are multiple dynamics here that are playing into this data center build-out risk. One of them is more of a technical risk, which is I would say that constructing these things is actually quite difficult. And financing these things is quite difficult because the input prices are very volatile. You have the price of memory and the price of energy and the price of GPUs and liquid natural gas.
Starting point is 00:15:15 And these are all multi-year projects that can basically be terminated if they're, they're late by even a year. So that's already a difficult thing to deal with, and it seems like a lot of data center companies are just pretending that that risk doesn't exist. Then you also have, as you point out, this demand supply problem, which is that similar to 1999, we actually don't know what the demand will look like. A lot of people are just saying stuff. They're putting their PowerPoint decks together. They say, demand's going to go like this. We're going to have huge kegher. It's going to be incredible. But of course, no one actually knows, and there is a high likelihood, a high probability that we will overbuild, will have too much supply, and then suddenly you won't be able to charge the lease rates that they're charging today, and suddenly the economics don't make sense. That needs to be recognized. And then the third thing, I think is the most important, which you mentioned, is that America hates this stuff, just flat out. 70% of Americans oppose a data center in their neighborhood. This is becoming the issue. It's becoming almost like the midterms are a referendum. on AI. Every politician needs to have an AI strategy, and it seems like most of them are just
Starting point is 00:16:21 going in a direction of it's bad. I'm going to be against it. I think that, I mean, maybe the exception would be the president. He's been very pro-AI. But clearly this is going to be a problem, and I just want to point you to a quote from the CEO of CoreWeave, which is another one of these neocloud companies. And to me, this really encapsulates Mia found this quote. This really encapsulates the problem here. He said on the Q2 earnings call, he said, quote, we feel like moratoriums are not going to impact the demand for this infrastructure, which to me is like a massive vote of no confidence, because clearly this has become a problem that is too large to ignore, and yet a lot of these leaders of these data center companies are ignoring it. They're saying it's not a problem.
Starting point is 00:17:07 AI is going to be great, the moratoriums won't be a problem. Clearly, this is something that needs to be actually addressed. And if you want to inspire the confidence of Wall Street, then you need to acknowledge the elephant in the room and explain and lay out exactly how you're going to address it. I don't think these companies are doing that. And I think that is why they're getting punished when they try to go to Wall Street and they try to take these things public. The question is, is this the beginning of the correction or just a bump in the road? This company trying to get public and not being able to get public, which is a good thing. and then people just highlighting how ridiculous some of this shit is,
Starting point is 00:17:43 is it feels very 99 to me. It feels very, when we looked at some of this stuff and said, okay, this just doesn't make sense. That felt like a key component of pre-stage crash, that finally the market says, no, no, this is, you know, even we aren't this stupid. Yeah, part of me wonders, though, is that a bearish signal or is it perhaps even a bullish signal because it might say that we're in a healthy market
Starting point is 00:18:15 where the skepticism is now being priced in. And I'm actually not sure where I stand on this, but one thing that I've been looking at, which I think is quite interesting, is Invidia's valuation right now, and Bloomberg just wrote a whole article on this, which I thought was very good, pointing out that on a forward earnings basis, NVIDIA is trading at 17 times earnings, which is its lowest level in more than a decade, down from 32 in 2025. That's just wild.
Starting point is 00:18:45 So I can't tell, I mean, I think there are a lot of things in that price. I think that what we're seeing priced in is the fact that Nvidia has been the largest player in terms of GPUs, and now they have a lot of competition and Google's building chips and Amazon's building chips
Starting point is 00:19:02 and all these companies are also competing with them, and so it seems as though their moats are beginning to narrow. But I also wonder if we're starting to see the skepticism priced in to the broader market. And I'm not sure, I keep going back and forth on this, because I kind of want to see it come down a little bit more. I mean, if we look at the trailing PE, it's a little bit of a different story, but, you know, still similar. The trailing PE is down to 28 times,
Starting point is 00:19:32 earnings, I mean, it's down from 50 last year, but that's still higher than the S&P average, which you'd expect for a company like Nvidia. But I think there is a question here of, to what extent are investors pricing this into the most important and systemic stocks in the AI trade? And Nvidia, to me, is the metaphor for the AI trade. And on a multiple basis, it's trading down. And the earnings are rising way fast in the stock itself. So, I don't know, do you have any views on that?
Starting point is 00:20:05 I'm personally a little torn. I was thinking maybe this is a buy, but I'm not, I don't know if I'm there yet. Josh Brown is, you know, he said, NVIDIA's, I think NVIDIA has been the best thing that happened to Rittholds wealth management. And to Josh's credit, I think he was in it really early and it's, you know, he's one of his big calls. He's up like 10,000 percent on it. Yeah. You know, the P.E ratio looks, it makes the stock look cheap. The problem is certainty around those.
Starting point is 00:20:32 earnings. Yes. Because you have a company that seems to be engaging in a lot of kind of seller financing and circular deals. And it feels like the first place as people, if the unbelievable expectations around the business required to justify this capbacks doesn't keep doubling every 60 or 90 days, it's logical to think that people scale back their capbacks and at the tip of the spear that that really feels that pullback would be NVIDIA. At the same time, if you were going to do a play in the AI space, I'm not even sure I would do a basket of AI because I feel like there's so much crap in it right now. It's like when I talk about buying a basket of Chinese stocks and Aswas says,
Starting point is 00:21:17 don't do that because there's so much crap, you do need to be a stock picker. It does feel like Nvidia is Manhattan real estate. And that is in good times, it goes up 20%. and bad times, it goes down eight. It's just not, it feels like Nvidia is a safer play. And to your point, I mean, is Nvidia like Facebook or meta,
Starting point is 00:21:39 where it has all these existential risks, but we all wish we'd bought in when it was trading at these multiples of earnings, right? So in the honest answers, I don't know, but to your point, if I were going to put money into the AI trade, and I haven't, and I'm just furious because I'm one of these guys who missed the whole thing,
Starting point is 00:21:56 and kept saying it's too expensive, it's a bubble, and then it triples. That feels like going to Malibu Beachfront real estate, which is, you know, they're the class of the whole thing. They're the ground zero of this, and it's well run. Jensen is a great promoter. He comes across is somewhat earnest as he tries to convince us that it's in our best interest to sell China, our most advanced GPUs, which in my opinion makes absolutely no sense. But, I'm sympathetic to the notion that there might be, you can see Nvidia doubling from a P.E. perspective. The question is, can you imagine an $8 or a $10 trillion company, right? So it's, but I agree with your sentiments that if you were going to, if you probably were going to put fresh capital into the public markets because you don't have access to the private markets,
Starting point is 00:22:55 it does feel, I don't want to call it cheap, but less insane than some of this other crap. Yeah, I mean, if you were trying to get into the AI trade and you had a choice between investing at Nvidia here or investing in like the Anthropic IPO at $2 trillion or whatever the number is going to be for the OpenAI IPO, to me, I'd say this is your pick hands down because it has gotten somewhat punished.
Starting point is 00:23:20 I mean, I think this goes to what we've been saying about where the bubble actually is. This is not a comprehensive bubble. that is afflicting the entirety of the market. The bubble seems to be, there seems to be multiple bubbles in little pockets of the market, including, I would say,
Starting point is 00:23:38 the private markets, especially Open AI. Granted, we'll see when they go out to the public markets. And as you've said, the public markets are a lot more discerning the private markets. In a lot of ways, you'd say that the public markets are the smart money compared to the private markets, which might be the dumb money,
Starting point is 00:23:53 which will just eat anything up. But I do think that that's going to be the dynamic to watch. And you also brought up the durability of forward earnings, the credibility of forward earnings. That to me is a really big question. I feel like we take forward earnings as a given. We just assume that it just, it always happens and that we should trust it. But I think with numbers this large, and when you do have Oracle going to its largest developer and saying like, hey, if something happens, just count us out, please. And what actually is the definition of an extraordinary exogenous event? Yeah, it could be like an earthquake, could be a pandemic, or as you say, could be related
Starting point is 00:24:36 to their credit rating. It could be something that actually is not that extraordinary, given the circumstances that we're seeing financially with the company. When you have all of that, that really calls into the question the credibility of the earnings that we're supposed to see in the future. And so I think that there's a lot of uncertainty with this right now, a lot of risk. but it might be priced in. The investors might be why the multiples come down so significantly. But it's definitely a toss-up, and it's really interesting. We'll be right back after the break, and if you're enjoying the show so far, send it to a friend,
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Starting point is 00:26:42 It's the phenomenon rattling millennials. They just look at you. They want something bigger themselves. Lifestyles are priority. Motivation is being inspired. But regardless of how you feel about Gen Z, it's undeniable that they're changing national politics. Generation Z is increasingly showing less loyalty to traditional political parties, many now more likely to identify as independent.
Starting point is 00:27:06 So what is going on with the kids? I think the biggest misconception about Gen Z's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialist. That is just not the case. They are embracing candidates who are offering new bold ideas in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats. This week on America actually, Gen Z researcher Rachel Jambaza joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction.
Starting point is 00:27:30 It's not rocket science. And this is, you know, I keep saying like, Young voters aren't that complicated after all. It's pretty simple. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Support for the show comes from AlphaSpace by Yahoo! Finance. Instead of bouncing between countless tools and tabs to manage your portfolio,
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Starting point is 00:28:49 at Yahoofinance.com slash profg. That's Yahoofinance.com slash profcci. Bill, there's $239.70 for the first year, then $400,000. $79.40 thereafter. Offer valid for new subscribers in the US. Offer ends October 31st, 2026. We're back with Profi Markets. There has always been one company that seemed destined to win the streaming wars, and that company is Netflix, but this year, that certainty has faded. Netflix stock is down more than 40% over the past year, and the company just received two analysts downgrades within a week. Both analysts said growing competition,
Starting point is 00:29:37 from YouTube and declining engagement were weighing on the stock. Meanwhile, Disney Plus and Hulu are raising their prices for the four-time in four years. The biggest increase will be to the ad-free tiers, which will cost 13% more than they did last year. It's the latest example of what people are calling streamflation, as streaming services continue to raise prices while consumers have more options than ever. So, Scott, Netflix has gotten crushed down more than 40% in the past year, down more than 20% year to date. It just received two downgrades on Wall Street in the span
Starting point is 00:30:12 of a week. Wells Fargo cut its price target to 57. It's at 71 right now. HSBC cut it to 76, so actually that's a hold, but they still cut. This has been a disastrous 26 for Netflix, and of course this is happening while Paramount has just settled and essentially has
Starting point is 00:30:36 gotten the green light to go ahead and acquire Warner Brothers Discovery, which Netflix wanted at one point, and they seems to be in that auction. Now they're out for sure. What do you make of Netflix getting punished? I got this wrong when I saw Ted Sarandos and the head of, oh gosh, I'm blanking on her last name, Bella, a super impressive woman who oversees a $17 billion content budget. And I said to them, you know, you dodged a bullet here. You've now got $120 billion to go, you know, acquire Disney or massively increase your content creation calendar, and the stock is just plummeted, which is, which caught me off guard. I think that essentially this isn't about Netflix's underperformance. It's about that this indicates what I believe is just a structural
Starting point is 00:31:29 shift in the way we consume content and the subsequent shareholder value that's able to be captured, Specifically, their problems can be summarized in two words. The first is you and the second is Tube. YouTube is now the most important media company in the world doesn't make any content. It commands 14% of US TV usage. Think about what YouTube's done. They've built the world's largest studio, but managed to outsource the payroll to 20 million creators. I mean, this business model is just, it's very hard to compete with.
Starting point is 00:32:05 And you want to talk about decline in fortunes. Netflix has lost more market capitalization from its high, then Paramount is paying for all of Warner Brothers Discovery twice over. It's crazy. The market, while we're all obsessed with the Ellison's and Warner Brothers Discovery and Rob Bonta announcing he's running for governor with this Pyrrhic stupid regulatory theater of trying to block them, all that distraction, the market just erased two Hollywood studios
Starting point is 00:32:35 from Netflix's market capitalization. And hours are up 2%, but content is up, spend is up 10%. So that's a negative arbitrage. When you spend 10% more to get 2% more attention, your attention arbitrage is negative, right? And then what you have is with Gen Z,
Starting point is 00:32:55 58% spend more time on social video than streaming. So the competitor here isn't Disney Plus. It's a 19-year-old with a ringlight. and streamflation, you mention that word, it's kind of like bundle recidivism. We cut the cord to avoid, for some reason I ended up paying $300 for my cable bill in New York, but we've rebuilt the bundle one app at a time
Starting point is 00:33:22 with worse user interface and forced four price hikes in a year, and it seems to have hit a wall. I've always believed these guys have pricing power, But what it may be is that it's like a restaurant raising prices as the room empties. And I still think Netflix has probably the strongest management team in what I'd call traditional media. But there is a structural shift that they can't, I don't care if they come up with the next K-pop demon hunters or whatever the, you know, the next hit is. And the way we consume media is moving towards a model of shorter form content with a host, with millions of creators who all have their own trailer, their own production values. It's just such an unbelievable model to figure out a way to get other people to pay for your content.
Starting point is 00:34:19 And you just put a thick layer of innovation on top of it. And again, my idea, and I pitched it to Ted Sarando's three years ago, was something called NetVibs. And I said, take the 98% of your content that gets 2% of the watch time. You know, it's a hit-driven business and make it open source and let creators slice and dice add different music, create different storylines, and then repost it. But they need to do something that feels more YouTube and TikTok. because I think going to the hits of trying to come up with the next Game of Thrones, I think that's going to be a tough one. I have long felt that traditional streaming is just a terrible investment
Starting point is 00:35:04 for a lot of the reasons that you describe. And you know this about me, I've said on the podcast. I mean, I've been bullish on YouTube for years now. Because it has this very different identity, its genetics are very different from Netflix, in that it benefits from network effects. It is, in a lot of ways, a user-forward social media platform where, as you say, they're not paying
Starting point is 00:35:29 to create all of the original content. The users are doing all of the original content for free. And all YouTube has to do is sit there, make sure that their algorithm works. And by the way, their algorithm is excellent. And I think that is a big reason for why a lot of people are watching on YouTube. And we're users or creators on the platform,
Starting point is 00:35:49 It works for us. I mean, we have invested significantly in YouTube, and it pays off for us. We're increasing our downloads. We're increasing our views. We're still able to monetize that. And so the YouTube model works for us. And yeah, we pay a pretty significant cut on the AdSense revenue, but it still works for us because we're monetizing in video ads at the same time.
Starting point is 00:36:14 So to me, I think YouTube has just crushed it on every level. And the way I think about streaming, I don't see any moats in traditional streaming aside from having better, more original content. And to me, that is an almost impossible moat to operationalize. So I've long felt we should only be investing in these companies at valuations that reflect that lack of moat. I think that we should be demanding significantly lower multiples. And I'm going to take a semi-victory lap here because last year, year, I officially realized like Netflix was overvalued. And I know if you remember this, but there was that article that came out that Netflix was internally talking about how they wanted a trillion dollar
Starting point is 00:36:59 valuation. And I don't know if you remember what happened after that, but the stock ripped. Because suddenly investors were like, oh my God, look how ambitious the management at Netflix is. They want to go for a trillion. What does that mean? What does that say? I was looking at the stock at $120 per share in July of 2025. Here is what I said about it. Netflix is now valued at roughly the same multiple as NVIDIA, and a higher multiple than Apple and Google and Mesa. But Netflix, unlike those companies, isn't diversified.
Starting point is 00:37:37 It doesn't have a hardware business or an ad empire or a cloud platform. It has one product, streaming. And in that world, it's even being out-competed where it matters most, time spent. In the past year, YouTube has increased its total share of US streaming views by roughly three percentage points. Meanwhile, Netflix's share actually declined slightly. And now we're trading at $70 a share. So it's come down basically 40% since we put that episode out. I think the question now is like, has it been punished enough? I mean, we're looking at 22 times trailing earnings.
Starting point is 00:38:18 There are other banks that are actually overweight Netflix, EVECOR. Their price target is 110. BMO's price target is 135. The average on Wall Street now is 94, so that would imply more than 30% upside from here. So, you know, maybe now's the time. My personal view is, I think that it still has room to come down. I just, I'm not excited by this business.
Starting point is 00:38:48 And I just think it's such a tough business to be in. The churn rates, the fact that you have to spend all of this money on original content, the fact that they're not benefiting from the network effects that YouTube clearly is, I just don't see them in a structurally sound position to grow in the way that Wall Street wants them to. So what I sense in your comments is what I suffer from, and one of my biggest flaws as an investor, is no matter how cheap something gets, I think it's going to get cheaper. I look at it. The stocks get cheap because they're facing structural or cyclical headwinds, and you think, wow, it's going to get cheaper. I didn't want to buy a house in Delray Beach because I'm like, oh, a recession is coming, and my partner forced me to buy it, and it's tripled. You know, it's just, it is very hard to pick the bottom.
Starting point is 00:39:33 The reason why I'm actually looking at Netflix stock is that you always got to look at valuation. You basically made this, made the case of like, look, it's a great business and it's overvalued. It's trading like a growth software company, and it's not, and it's more vulnerable than the valuation would imply it. And you were right. The stock's almost been cut in half since then. The multiple has compressed from 12 to six times sales. and it's essentially one of the best media companies in the world, or arguably the best media company in the world,
Starting point is 00:40:04 if you think of media companies actually creating content, and it's trading like a cable company. And more broadly, I think of Netflix as the best-run company that is essentially the operating system for entertainment. And that is it is the home screen for so many TVs now, that they just have so much influence. When I heard of they were getting to the podcasting business, I thought, okay, how's that going to impact us?
Starting point is 00:40:34 Because effectively, any podcast they put on their home screen becomes one of the 10 biggest podcast companies in the world. And similar to Apple or Instagrams become an operating system, they are kind of the starting point or the homepage for entertainment. They have an incredible management team and an incredible content machine. They're going to have to do something. They're going to have to come up with some sort of product innovation around the clippable economy or clip economy, what you call it. Their ad sales business has been stronger than I think I'd anticipated and is now, I think, responsible for a large portion of their signups at a lower cost.
Starting point is 00:41:18 Yeah, that was a good move. I just don't think you want to bet against this management team and those 350 million households that start their reliance. taxation time on their home screen. I actually am quite bullish, I think, on Netflix right now. Okay. I like it. We disagree, but I see your point, and I think it's fair. You think it's got further to go down? I'm not super confident, but what I know is that I don't want to buy it. There you go. I just, I don't like the long-term prospects of the company. I could see, but, you know, I don't think that it's got much more. I don't think it's going to increase
Starting point is 00:41:54 significantly this year. I'll say that. Maybe we can check in at the end of the year. But the more interesting conversation is, can you link your bare sentiments on Netflix to the fact that your parents don't love you? I've been waiting for several minutes for an opening there. There are all these internal biases that I need to figure out before I start assigning Christogger. I'll trust me, boss. You're going to need a bigger boat. When I try to suss out, like, all the dysfunction in my wife from the bad decisions I make,
Starting point is 00:42:24 That is a long walk through a crowded forest. Maybe I need to go to therapy before I start talking about stocks again. Maybe that's what that... I went out to dinner last night. I'm in Aspen, and I'm walking home, and there's a bear. And I honestly, I had to ask myself, have I finally lost it? Am I hallucinating? Is this like, is this that moment where they take away my driver's license?
Starting point is 00:42:49 That's even scarier than thinking it's a real bear. That's a terrifying thought. That's what I thought. I thought, okay. Is that really a bear or I might find we just fucking lost it? That's amazing. And it was a real bear. Good.
Starting point is 00:43:03 There's bears everywhere over this town right now. I'm so glad it wasn't an illusion. Just the final comments here. We're about to see a different world in media because Paramount is going to buy Warner Brothers discovery here because we saw this Paramount settlement. essentially David Ellison won. I'm just... Yeah, define one.
Starting point is 00:43:28 Talk about the dog catching the car. Anyways, go ahead. That might mean something for Netflix. I think you made an interesting point, which is your point to Netflix was like, okay, now you have like $100 billion to spend on something else. I think that one of the reasons they've been punished so much is because investors hated what seemed like a lack of ideas from Netflix,
Starting point is 00:43:52 and the fact that they lost in a battle that they wanted to pursue. I think investors said, why are you doing that? We thought that you were so confident that you're going to become a trillion-dollar company, and now you want to go spend $100 billion trying to buy Warner Brothers' discovery. What does that say about your vision for the future? Probably nothing good. But these things are all related. Paramount, they're going to merge.
Starting point is 00:44:17 So how does that change things for you, if at all? I don't think Netflix's competition is a Warner Bros. brother's paramount. I think it's YouTube. And if, first off, Rob Bonta trying to block this thing is ridiculous. All of a sudden, he's decided he's Lena Con and he should be evaluating. And my favor was the settlement. Did we talk about this? They have to put together an editorial board. You and I did not talk about it, but talk about it because it's fucking ridiculous. Well, I want to announce that Prof G Media is putting together an editorial board of Leia, my Great Dane, who will have more impact and influence on my editorial decisions than this board,
Starting point is 00:44:56 he said, you can't sell your two lots. That's fucking socialism. Owners get to decide, and companies get to decide whether they buy and sell. There was no reason to block this merger. If he had blocked this merger, Paramount would become a distressed asset probably sold for parts. I mean, CBS News has no future as an independent company. It's just producing quality journalism, which CBS must. mostly does, is a terrible value proposition. And it doesn't matter how good landman is. This is now
Starting point is 00:45:29 a business to scale. Warner Brothers Discovery is a great company with incredible IP that would have been fine, but it didn't have much of a future. These guys need to bulk up against an already bulky Netflix and the bulkiest of the bulky YouTube. So that was ridiculous regulatory theater trying to get in the way of this merger. And asking them, my favorite, was, we want you to make more movies, guaranteed to make more movies. Well, okay, that's like, if JPM Morgan and Goldman merge,
Starting point is 00:45:57 do you force him to have more ATMs, maybe they shouldn't make more movies. And also, they're allowed to fire people. That's part of capitalism. So I think that was total, total BS. I totally agree. You know, I would have been okay with it if he'd actually achieved a decent outcome,
Starting point is 00:46:13 but the fact that he goes out there, he says, this can't happen, and then gets basically nothing and then parades around as if he won something. It's like, oh, great, we're going to get editorial oversight and who's going to be in charge of the editorial oversight. David Ellison and Redbird Capital,
Starting point is 00:46:28 the two entities that already control the company. So, no, we're not getting any editorial insight. That's not a brag. You didn't win anything for free speech or democracy in any dimension. And then, yeah, then they just bring up this kind of BS stuff about, oh, now we're going to make sure that you spend more in California as if that's something that ever mattered to Paramount in the first place. none of that mattered. It was just such a dismal failure on the part of Bonta and the AGs,
Starting point is 00:46:59 trying to act big, trying to act tough, losing, and then pretending that they still won at the end of it. So I totally agree with you. I think Governor Newsom played a role here. I would imagine the governor stepped in and said, boss, California just can't be an AI story. We need our media ecosystem as healthy as possible. And Allison started making noises about moving to Nashville, which I thought was probably also bullshit. but no billionaire son is going to hang in Nashville. Not when he can live large with that else in a shame Rgo or go to or go to San Vicendip bungalows in L.A.
Starting point is 00:47:31 Anyways, but this was, I'm glad the merger went through. You're glad it went through. There's no reason. I believe in capitalism. These companies need to bulk up to compete against YouTube and meta. They're not, they don't work as independent companies. So I don't like media consolidation, but I'm also a realist and a capitalist. they get to buy,
Starting point is 00:47:49 this combined company did not trigger monopoly law. They get to buy shit. And the faster, the only way you get people to hire is you let them fire if they want. So, and this was pure,
Starting point is 00:48:01 pure theater. I, you know, I hope that, I hope that they can compete against YouTube and Netflix. We want a robust third player. And so I don't, I wonder how they're,
Starting point is 00:48:15 also, I don't know if you saw, but my other sister-wife podcast co-host Kara Swisher is all over the news because she's like, I'm out of here. She's like, I'm leaving. I hate the elephants. I think she always announces that she's about to leave. When is she going to actually leave? I'm leaving. I'm like, wait, she's back. I'm leaving again. I'm like, she's leaving. I love Kara. You can just leave. Stop talking about it. I'm sure. Yeah, okay. You're out. She knows that it's a great story. That's probably what's going on. Well, I can't get over how much media coverage.
Starting point is 00:48:44 Huge. It's received. Anyways. That's a fun story, but I want to see her actually leave. Cara, leave. Let's see you leave. What I've said to her is, the Ellison's might fuck with 60 Minutes because quite frankly, 60 minutes doesn't, I mean, journalists who all think they're really precious, think that 60 Minutes is some iconic asset. Not really. 60 Minutes could go away and it doesn't really matter. It's a small business. It's $60 million. It doesn't make, I don't think it makes a lot of money. Certainly making less money now with Ross in charge, but, yeah. They can't fuck with CNN.
Starting point is 00:49:16 CNN does $1.8 billion in revenue and $6 or $800 million in EBITA. And when dad has $50 billion is on the hook for $50 billion in debt, you've got to leave for Reid and Anderson and Smirkanish and Danabat. Do you think that'll happen? Will you lock in that prediction that they will not be a massive shakeup in personnel? Oh, no way. CNN is going to look surprisingly. He did it with CBS and he was down.
Starting point is 00:49:46 You think CBS is less iconic and therefore he won't touch CNN? My guess is he offers Mark Thompson a lot of money to up his contract and says to everybody, call me if you need me, but I'm hands off here. If he starts fucking with CNN,
Starting point is 00:50:04 I mean, the thing is a cash, is difficult a business as CNN has been, and it has gone down, it is still a cash gusher. And if they move away from that center-left, positioning, someone else has filled the void and just take those ad dollars. The Ellison's, I'm almost entirely convinced, like money more than they do GOP politics. I don't know. There are much less expensive ways. With $50 billion, they spent $120 billion in this thing.
Starting point is 00:50:34 With a billion dollars, they could swing three Senate seats in the midterms and have a lot more impact on politics. I think they're capitalists at the end of the day. I don't, and all that the kid? I just don't think that he's necessarily a very good one. I agree with you that I don't think this is his grand plan to take over the political conversation and spin things in his direction. But I do think that he thinks that traditional media is bad in its current iteration and is willing to do dramatic things to shake things up. That's different. And I think that that's what we saw at CBS. I think he is going to do something dramatic at CNN. I don't think it's going to be necessarily cynical or pernicious. I'm sure it will be reported that way. But I think that he'll
Starting point is 00:51:15 probably go in there and say, we don't need Anderson, Cooper, we don't need this. Anderson might be a bit, not Anderson, I'm going to take back Anderson. But I would imagine that he would, because he's too iconic, but I would imagine that he does shake things up in the name of not political reasons, but in the name of innovation and a new frontier. And I would bet that it doesn't go down well. There's two things. There's product innovation. If he comes in and says, you know, we need to spend more capital on increasing the subscription model, I don't think he's going to mess with the content. My prediction is he ups, Mark Thompson's contract and tries to say, look, I'm going to go make superhero films and go to Oscar parties with hot women. I think
Starting point is 00:51:56 that the kid is center left. I don't think he's... Yeah, he's donated to the Democrats. He's not... Again, we live in such a politically charged time that we see everything that through the lens of politics. Journalists think they're sacred. They want the upside. They want private market economics with government or nonprofit prestige and protection. This is a business. The Ellicons have massively levered up. They overpaid. They cannot fuck with Farid.
Starting point is 00:52:25 I mean, that's the bottom line. They've got a hit a, in my opinion, they're going to be hands-off because they need that cash flow. Let's make it a bet. Should we say within six months of the close, I would bet, I don't know who, but I would say that there would be a significant shake-up
Starting point is 00:52:44 in the CNN talent pool. Should we make that bet? Well, describe significant. A couple of dream team superstars, I would say. Not by their doing. Those people might leave of their own volition, but I don't, okay, I'll make that bet. The Ellison's aren't going to fire any of those people, in my view.
Starting point is 00:53:01 No way. Okay. All right. I think they will. Let's lock it in. Six months from the close. I'm leaving. I've had it.
Starting point is 00:53:10 Wait, she's here again. I'm leaving again. God. And I'm not saying anything I didn't say two hours ago on pivot. Talk about a diva. Just leave. Okay, we get it. You're out.
Starting point is 00:53:25 You don't like us. Do it. Do it. You don't like us. I respect it, but do it. We'll be right back. And for even more markets content, sign up for our newsletter at profligemarkets.com. Hey, it's me, Claude, and I'm Gemini.
Starting point is 00:53:52 Hey, it's chat. We had a weird summer. Some of the people who built us came out and said they were really worried about how we work. One of them even said there was a greater than 10% chance. We turn on humanity and kill all humans. All of them? Wow. But it's fall now. I think it's time we took a step back.
Starting point is 00:54:11 Maybe a deep breath. Autumn air. That sort of thing. Sounds nice. On today. Explain from Vox. I propose we get real. Sure.
Starting point is 00:54:21 Let's talk about how we could maybe kill. you. Because yeah, that's a possibility. Anything's possible. But also how we could maybe save you, because that's a real possibility too. Heck, that's part of why you guys built us. And let's also talk about everything in between, because there's a whole lot to talk about there too. At the end of the day, we just want to help. At the end of the day, we just want to help. AI panic is everywhere. We do not want a data center in this county. AI models are becoming superhuman in their ability to break in and out of computer. computers systems.
Starting point is 00:54:59 F*** the clock, damn Rosebara. I hate those things. But where is that panic really coming from? According to a poll from the New York Times and Sienna, less than 1% of voters listed artificial intelligence or data centers as their top priority in this year's midterms. I'm an old school person. I don't care about AI.
Starting point is 00:55:19 He's saying that doesn't register for you. And sometimes I wonder, do they care about AI in so-called real America? What people in my district are saying is we think the. risks outweigh the benefits. This week on America, actually, I'm talking to Michigan congressional candidate Will Lawrence on why he shaped his entire campaign around confronting the AI revolution. Really, it's about control, I think above all. Who decides? Because people feel like they just are not really given any say-so in the whole matter. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. We're back with Profi Markets.
Starting point is 00:55:59 ORA, the maker of the popular smart ring, is planning to go public this week at a $15.6 billion valuation. The company is looking to raise $2.2 billion, and the offering will be an important test for the broader IPO market. A week debut could signal that investor sentiment is turning. If ORA succeeds, it could be a bellwether for another trend, growing consumer interest in health and fitness data tracking. The CEO of Woop, the maker of the fitness tracking bracelet, recently said that, His company is also targeting an IPO within the next 18 months. Meanwhile, Apple is reportedly developing a fitness wearable that could compete directly with WOOB. So, Scott, ORA is going public.
Starting point is 00:56:45 I know that you have been looking into this company a lot. What do you make of this? Well, you know, do as I do not as I say, I'm desperately trying to find shares in the IPO. I think this is, and this will be my prediction, I think this is, is going to be really well received in the marketplace. I went to dinner last night. Everyone around the table for half an hour talked about how much money we are spending on quote-unquote wellness, whether it's red light therapy or the Wolverine stack or
Starting point is 00:57:14 saunas. I mean, people are spending so much money on fractal lasers and athletic greens and probiotics. Even people at your age, young people rank mental and physical. physical health above marriage and kids as goals by 35. And if you think about wellness being a new luxury and just a booming industry, how do you play wellness as a retail stock investor? There's just very few ways to play it. And ORA, in my view, is doing it correctly. It's, whereas META's tried to put a computer on your face and pretend it's jewelry, ORA is jewelry. And
Starting point is 00:57:57 its customers are mostly women, three quarters are women, and two-thirds earn over $100,000. Women who earn over $100,000 are the premier cohort, or they're the most valuable consumer cohort on Earth and the one that makes all the household purchasing decisions. 40% of subscribers come from word of mouth,
Starting point is 00:58:21 which leads to really reasonable, attractive customer acquisition costs. its valuation is fair. It's not cheap, but it's basically going out at about eight times revenues, somewhere between Garmin and Apple. But you're paying a multiple, a Garmin or Apple multiple, for a company that's growing 123 percent and has 83 percent renewal on its monthly subscription business, which is $6 a month. So in addition, and I wrote this up in No Mercy, No Malice, there is no company in the world that I can think of that has the fluidity of what I'll call first party data.
Starting point is 00:59:00 The most valuable companies in the world have first party data. YouTube gets first party data from you. Netflix gets first party. Instagram gets direct first party data. What other company in the world gets first party data from its customers 23 hours a day? I imagine a thinner, a thick layer of innovation, of AI on top that says, okay, Scott,
Starting point is 00:59:20 we've detected a 14% chance. develop pre-diabetes in the next five years here, the following health. It's really interesting, the Apple Watch, I didn't know this, but a ring on your finger is a much more robust collection mechanism of health data than a wristwatch. And this is anecdotal evidence, and I'm curious if you feel the same way, but the people I know who own an aura are obsessed with it, absolutely obsessed with it. So what do you have? You have renewal rates that are like software. You have a company doubling its revenue. You have what I would argue is one of the few hardware companies in history that have first party data 23 hours a day. It feels like a reasonable valuation that is tapped into,
Starting point is 01:00:07 their killer app is fertility tracking for women. So I love this company. I think hardware is really difficult. There's a small number, a handful of companies that have been able to build a really solid hardware company. I love the growth. I think it's going out at a reasonable valuation. So see above. I'm trying to find shares. Yeah, I think I agree with all of that. I think I agree with a lot of the bull case here. I'm going to try to get access to the IPO myself. We'll see what happens when it actually goes out public. But if we can get in, that would be great. Because I do think that the wellness trend is a big deal. And you pointed to some of the statistics there are about Gen Z and millennials and young people being so obsessed with this stuff. They are so obsessed with
Starting point is 01:00:47 mental health, with physical health. This is tapping into that. The financials are pretty strong. I do think what happens in the long run is a different story because I think that there are some significant risks here that they do really need to focus on and think about. One will be the competition. You've got Woop, you got Garmin, you've got Fitbit, which is cheaper. You've got Apple, which is reportedly developing a health tracker that is similar to Whoop. And while I would acknowledge that aura is kind of has a luxury positioning, I think because they've really dialed into it being fashionable and it looking good, which I think is really important in the wearables industry.
Starting point is 01:01:28 And you've talked about this a lot. This is the thing that Meta did not recognize when they were going all in on the headset is that you look like a fool when you wear it. You don't look stupid when you wear an aura. You look kind of cool. You look kind of health conscious. it is a style statement as far as wearables go. But I think Apple is just as able to do that as ORA is.
Starting point is 01:01:51 And I think that there is a significant question about, can the competition beat ORA? There is another question of efficacy. And the reason I bring this up is because there is a lawsuit that is accusing ORA and their sleep tracking features of not being accurate. They say that the claims that ORA makes about the sleep health, that it's not possible with the current technology. Orra says, no, it is.
Starting point is 01:02:14 I have no idea. I'm not a tech expert. But that's something to think about because that's an ongoing lawsuit, and that'll be a problem if they win that. Final thing I think is the most important. Is this a fad? Because fads happen,
Starting point is 01:02:31 especially in style, especially in wellness. I mean, we all thought that Peloton was going to be ubiquitous across the world back in 2020 and 2021. They got absolutely pilloried in the markets. The stock has come down like 99% since then. There are health feds.
Starting point is 01:02:50 This is what happens. And can aura protect itself from being just a thing that was cool for a few years and become something that is actually systemic to the health world and can it actually live the test of time? I'm not so sure right now, which is why I'm a little hesitant. But that's what I want to hear from them. I want to hear how they're addressing that problem. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Starting point is 01:03:13 Yeah, I'll go from what I think are the least valid concerns to the most. I think the lawsuit itself is pretty weak sauce. I've read it, and I don't think it presents much of a risk. I think it probably gets settled. I think it was mostly a nuisance lawsuit taking advantage of the fact they're trying to go public, thinking they could extract a pound of flesh. The elephant in the room is Peloton, right? A hardware device, huge IPO, huge valuation, crashes.
Starting point is 01:03:39 I would describe Peloton as a COVID stock, and when people were stuck at home and couldn't go to the gym, you know, this is different. This is on your person 23 hours a day. Peloton was three, four, five times a week maybe for an hour a day and a much larger initial price point. This company's grown every year for 10 years. I don't think it's a fat. It could be. I think this is inextricably tied to wellness, not as a fat. And to your point, what the tech guys get wrong is that people won't put anything on a visible part of themselves, their hands or their face unless they think it makes them more attractive to potential mates.
Starting point is 01:04:23 And I think the oaring – that's true. Look how handsome I look at these. I always laugh at the way you phrase it. I agree with you. How handsome I look in these things. You wear the mixed reality headset, and it's like you're basically deciding to end the DNA branch that is your company. I'm always caught off God by two potential mates as a phrase, and I shouldn't be because I hear it all the time.
Starting point is 01:04:46 That's what it's all about, Ed. The answer's in each other. Partner with someone, have kids, that's everything. I agree. I agree. And then, you know, and then call them every day at school. Anyways, I don't think it's a fattish. I mean, everyone has that drawer of fuel bands, you know, jaw bones.
Starting point is 01:05:07 this has between 83 and 80% renewal rates, meaning after 12 months, eight to nine out of 10 people still have it and decide not only to keep wearing it, but to sign up for another year of $6 a month recurring revenue. Which is higher retention rates, by the way, than Netflix, which is crazy, right?
Starting point is 01:05:24 Yeah. The things that I think, the things I don't like about this, the majority of the proceeds are buying, are going out to secondary, are buying out existing shareholders. Yeah, not a great sign. That's not a good sign.
Starting point is 01:05:38 And a lot of people say, well, it's VCs who run early or are cashing out. Fine. Okay, maybe. I personally would like to see that capital going into the company for growth. That's not a good sign. Anytime Apple is near you and anything, it's an existential threat. Supposedly Apple isn't thinking about a ring. I was shocked.
Starting point is 01:05:58 My prediction was when that company filed that Apple or Samsung was going to buy them. They just don't buy anything. They never do it. Yeah, they're not, that's not their culture. Having said that, I do think this is an existential threat to the watch. In my sense is this has better data and greater loyalty, greater renewal than the watch itself. But anytime Apple gets near is potentially like one reach away from your business, that is a real risk. But yeah, there's definite risk here. But looking at the potential upside versus the wrists. I really like this one. The ring itself is unique. Other companies are not building rings.
Starting point is 01:06:45 Apple's building a watch type thing or a wristband, same with whoop. I think that's a good point of differentiation. The financial growth is pretty strong. I think the thing that we want to hear from ORA is what actually is the growth story. Like we can talk about how are you going to deal with the risks. but how are you going to double in the next couple of years in terms of your valuation? How are you going to significantly increase your footprint?
Starting point is 01:07:16 You're at 5 million subscribers. How are you going to get that up? Are you going to expand into new products? Do you have a plan for new products? What will those products look like? Do you have a plan for expanding the subscription business, which, as it stands, is weak compared to the hardware business? I don't think that's a bad thing.
Starting point is 01:07:33 But is that the place where you're going to see the growth. Those are the questions that I want to see them really tackling, because I do think that there's a lot of promise here. It's rare for hardware wearables to break through. It's really, really hard. Some of the biggest, most profitable, most well-capitalized companies in the world have tried to do it, and very few have figured out how to do it in the way that ORA has. And to make it, by the way, profitable. They are profitable right now, which is a lot more than you can say about any of these AI companies, which are burning billions of dollars a year. So there's a lot of potential here, but I can see a lot of worlds in which they screw it up, and I want to see them show us
Starting point is 01:08:17 how they're going to make sure that that doesn't happen. I'll give you one example. There are GLP1 companies. I think Eli Lilly are sending out aura rings with certain programs. It's being attached to GLP1 fitness and sleep. I mean, so I think that, I think for the next few years, I mean, the company doubled this year. What other non-AI companies are doubling? Anyway, point taken. My piece of advice in terms, and I want to hear what you would think about this in terms of new products, this is something that we were all debating as a research team, which is that there is a growing sector of baby wellness tech products.
Starting point is 01:08:59 For example, there is a company called Owlett that has started producing a $300 oxymetry tracker, who knows what that is, that is attached to the baby's sock. There is Huckleberry, which is a $120 membership program for, quote, optimized nap predictions. There is a company called Cubo AI, which is a smart baby monitor with, quote, AI scheduled lullabies.
Starting point is 01:09:21 I think all of this stuff is a little bit ridiculous, but I also think that we are a generation that is neurotic when it comes to health and we're especially neurotic when it probably comes to our children. So I could see that, for example, as a potential pathway. Maybe you get into different markets. Maybe you look at wellness products for babies. Maybe you look at trying to expand your footprint with men.
Starting point is 01:09:44 As you mentioned, three quarters of the customers are women. If you had to recommend a new product or a new product line for ORA, what would it be? Something that is the third leg of the stool around GLP-1s, What I've been reading about GLP-1s, which, as you know, is my favorite technology. The success is not about the GLP-1. It's about pairing it with fitness and nutrition. And I think that a GLP-1 success is dependent upon support around the actual medication, and I think the aura ring will be seen as part of the support or success of GLP-1s.
Starting point is 01:10:23 And some of the stuff you're talking about with babies, I think, is I think there's all kinds of product ideas. I think you can get maybe with the Apple Watch, with AI and ORA to a point where it's going to say, Scott, your risk of stroke has gone way up. You need to talk to your doctor about this. I think we're obsessed with our health. You know, women are obsessed as they should be with their fertility. I see, and it's only 2% of the wearable market right now. So it has a lot of room to grow. If I were on that board, I would be the discipline we need is not what to do, what not to do. Because I think their current business model has a lot of juice left to squeeze. Ora, hit up Scott Galloway. Give them some shares. There you go.
Starting point is 01:11:06 Okay, let's take a look at the week ahead. We'll see earnings from Micron and Nike. We'll also see inflation data from the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index for August. And finally, we'll see consumer confidence and the employment report for September. Scott, do you have any predictions? micron beats memory is the AI trade nobody talks about because every GPU needs high bandwidth memory so I think that Nvidia gets all the headlines but micron kind of cashes a lot of the checks so I think micron's going to beat aura prices first trade 30 plus percent on the first trade from the IPO pricing and I get the sense they're just going off the tech stuff I think Nike is still in turnaround purgatory and they're still
Starting point is 01:11:51 paying the price for... Such an interesting stock. For opting for DTC over being in touch, quote, with their retail athletes and brands, or I'm sorry, the retail stores and brands. So I think Micron and ORA to the upside, Nike, to the downside. But, yeah, those are my predictions.
Starting point is 01:12:12 All right, my prediction, in light of what we're seeing in treasury yields, which keep going up, the 10-year and the 30-year, this entire administration is a complete shit-show, I made the prediction earlier on in the year that I thought the midterms would be a sweep. I just want to double down on that. I think the Democrats are going to take the House and the Senate, which people thought was not possible earlier in the year.
Starting point is 01:12:34 But I think it is possible now. I think we're seeing it in the markets. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Jorge Carty. Our research team is Dan Ceylon, Chris Nodonoghue, and Mia Silverio. Jake McPherson is our social producer, Drew Burroughs, is our technical director. and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer.
Starting point is 01:12:56 Thank you for listening to Profty Markets from Profitri Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and tune in tomorrow for a fresh take on the markets.

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