Stock Club EP #185: Sam Altman's Firing & Return to OpenAI: What It Means for AI

Key Highlights

1. The OpenAI Leadership Rollercoaster

Emmet and Michael dissect the surprising events surrounding Sam Altman's temporary departure from OpenAI. They discuss the implications of this leadership shakeup and what it signifies for the future of AI and corporate governance.

2. OpenAI's Unique Structure and Microsoft Partnership

This segment delves into the intricate relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft, analyzing how their partnership could shape the future of AI technology. The hosts discuss the potential impacts of OpenAI's corporate decisions on the tech industry.

3. Tech Giants in Focus: Nvidia, Novo Nordisk, and Market Dynamics

The conversation shifts to a broader analysis of the tech market, including insights into the current states of Nvidia and Novo Nordisk. Emmet and Michael provide their perspectives on the market's trends and what investors should watch out for

Transcript:

Emmet Savage : 0:00

I never thought we'd see such a potential. I suppose perceived destruction of value more than Twitter. Then we were witnessing with OpenAI. This was even another level, but I think we've seen the decision reversed. Chatgpt, or rather OpenAI, is a tool that 100 million people use in their job and in their school and at home, and you know, this is something that isn't just a pedestrian piece of software. It really has permeated businesses and lives all over the world, so suddenly this was at risk of being pulled from under our feet.

Michael O'Mahony: 0:41

Hi there and welcome to Stock Club, a podcast brought to you by my Wall Street. I'm Mike, and joining me in today's episode is my Wall Street's Chief Investor, amit Savage. Before we get into the show, I just want to give a quick word to our friends at Vodafone Business who have recently launched their V Hub Digital Advisory Service. This is offering Irish businesses all sizes free one-to-one digital support and advice. You don't even have to be a Vodafone business customer to avail of the service. So search Vodafone V Hub to book a call with one of the V Hub digital experts and we will leave a link in the show notes for today's episode. Amit, how are you? It's good to see you.

Emmet Savage : 1:14

Good to see you, Mike. How are you doing today?

Michael O'Mahony: 1:17

I'm good. I'm good. We're just coming off the back of our live event, our Horizon members event in Dublin, so I'm still kind of riding that high, which is great, over here, over your takeaways from the weekend.

Emmet Savage : 1:29

There was a few things I think. The first thing is that I really love getting together with like-minded people, like, no matter what you're into. When you go to a summit or a conference with people who are into the same thing, you realize that you've found, or at least found in part, your tribe, and I love that. Other takeaways as you know, mike, we, the speakers, intentionally avoided comparing any notes prior to the event, just to ensure that our opinions were not influenced by any group consensus. I was really intrigued to hear Bill Mann say that this is the most severe small cap bear market ever. If you're there, you probably voted in a poll run by Bill by clapping. Interestingly, he concurred in my opinion that a small cap rally is on the horizon, and that's something I'll touch on again in Horizon because I really think it's some amazing opportunities there. What else would I take from it? I suppose I was excited for us to do it again next year, bigger and hopefully better and hopefully even more engaging. I also learned an old human habit, an unavoidable human habit, which is when you pay cash for a ticket, you turn up, but if you don't pay cash for a ticket, you'll take it or leave it. We actually would have had twice the number of people in the room if everyone who said they were coming actually came, which is actually a small miracle. They didn't because the room was packed. What were your takes from it, mike?

Michael O'Mahony: 3:02

I love this. I think was it yourself or Bill who said that there's only 7% of Irish adults who are investors. That hit home when we talk about bringing those people together, because I don't think there's a lot of those events happening in Ireland. That's what I really liked about it to see that there was that communal effort there and maybe it should be expanded upon more. It was great. Then I had a bunch of people come up to me and be like Jesus. You don't look like you're sound. That was a bit different as well. I felt like I was getting in trouble and everyone come up to me and be like I recognize your voice.

Emmet Savage : 3:42

I'm nearly 6'2 and I have never been on a stage where I am by far the shortest Between you, bill Mann, chris Hill and Shane Kern. I was dwarfed by the four of you. I was like the mini me. I really felt like I'd shrunk again. Yeah.

Michael O'Mahony: 4:00

There was a lot of meat up on stage, okay, no, yeah, I just want to say as well I'm sure there's listeners now who are at it and just a big thank you as well. It was a brilliant night and I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did, because we want to do it again more often and bigger and better. Yeah, no, a great success.

Emmet Savage : 4:21

Okay.

Michael O'Mahony: 4:23

Let's get into the show this week. I'm really glad you took the lead on this topic because it's shifting under speech as we speak. We're recording Wednesday morning. We're going to get into the open AI saga. What's happened in the last five, six days with basically the world's most important startup, emmett? Do you want to give us a quick recap of events now? We can try to get this under wraps, I suppose. Yeah, it's been.

Emmet Savage : 4:51

Yeah, I have a nose head. The story is going to evolve in the hours between us recording this here on the morning of Wednesday 22nd of November and it going live on Friday. Anyway, as most people have heard because really this news has even permeated to the smallest and most regional radio channels in Ireland, but as most people heard the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, sam Altman, was shock fired by the board. Literally we fired him. Then, following that, a host of high profile resignations in the company were tendered. The CTO, mira Murati, was appointed as the interim CEO. There was momentum to reinstate Altman. Then the board reportedly agreed to revise the decision in principle and negotiations faltered. And then they put in a guy called Emmett Shear, who's the co-founder of a video, the video streaming platform Twitch, which I think is a gaming platform.

Michael O'Mahony: 5:52

He doesn't know his name either.

Emmet Savage : 5:54

No, he doesn't. Two T's. What is wrong with those people? Anyway, you've really hit the sore nerve, I don't know. Yeah, he was put in as the interim CEO and Altman was apparently going to move to Microsoft and then apparently about 730 of 730 OpenAI employees signed a letter threatening to quit unless the board resigns Altman and reinstates him. Then, when I woke up this morning, the news was he's back in as CEO and it really is a lesson in trying to deal with things before bringing to the public forum and the court of public appeal. I never thought we'd see such a potential perceived destruction of value, more than Twitter Then we were witnessing with open AI. This was even another level, but I think we've seen the decision reversed.

Michael O'Mahony: 6:52

Yeah, yeah, and I think there's so much that that comes into this decision. So why exactly was? What were the reasons given for some of its firing?

Emmet Savage : 7:03

It was actually very interesting because I don't ever recall saying something like this happened before and there's a specific reason, and it was a piece written fortune magazine that said that Altman the ultimate Implosion, if you will has proven to be a massive wake-up call about the importance of governance in the tech world and whether or not the open AI board made the right call. When it shows to fire Altman and I think we can, we all have the feeling was the wrong call and they seem to have admitted it was the wrong call. But it's a case that we couldn't really argue because we weren't given enough information to understand why, in fact, the guy, the guy, was fired. But anyway, according to fortune, the company's approach to governance was a demonstrable mess Like how a generationally important company like open AI could be plunged into chaos is down to a unique Corporate slash governance model. The company's structure meant that the board of directors had ultimate control to make decisions over both the non-profit and for profit Open AI entities, and it left everyone surprised. It left, like, for example, their anchor investor, microsoft, blindsided.

Michael O'Mahony: 8:19

Why the guy heard Microsoft got told a minute before the meeting. Yeah, that's basically hanging up the phone when Sam I, sam Altman, was walking in there. We're like yeah, by the way, he's sad you were. We're getting rid of this fella. We'll chat to you on Monday.

Emmet Savage : 8:35

Like they put 14 billion in. You think that would you know matters a little more respect now. Apparently, its structure was designed to develop AI's in intelligence, if you well, if you, if you were in a safe and and kind of beneficial manner for humanity and and a cat. The profit arm from open AI, which was only introduced in 2019 and its own right, was able to issue equity and raise further capital and work with other non-profits that were established in 2015. But but there's a few things that were really Unusual about the firing. The first thing is that the open AI's board, the open AI's board job, was not designed To protect our represent stakeholders. I mean that that in its own right is enough to say just this function there, but it was there to prevent an AI apocalypse, which I think most of us at a pedestrian level can say, yeah, we don't want that. We heard AI has a potential threat, so we're glad the board has some power, but a pair of vetoes, everything else we can see and it brought with it a degree of malfunction. And that structure means that, unlike most private companies, where major Investors and VCs sit on the company's board and have, you know, a say on how the company is run Open. Ai's key investors had no power at the board level whatsoever. The second Unusual thing was that the board who fired Sam Ultman was small and they were inexperienced. This wasn't like a grown-up board and that kind of Scientists a lot of them, wasn't it?

Michael O'Mahony: 10:11

There were scientists, yeah yeah, I mean, which feeds into your kind of top process of what we need to prevent. We need to prevent apocalypse. We're not returning value to shareholders as our number one target here. We need to really Really, I suppose cultivate a safe application of this world-changing technology.

Emmet Savage : 10:29

Which I have to admire. But the chairperson, greg Brockman, wasn't even involved in the decision and as far as I know, that's unheard of in a traditional governance setting. Brockman later announced that he'd be standing, stepping down from the board and then he quit the company altogether and at that time had joined Microsoft. I don't know is up to this morning because maybe when, when in my early days of engineering and coding there was always a file called dot rollback, which was a big file of software file of the thing before you made changes, I think they really rolled out the dot rollback software. But anyway, the board didn't keep investors abreast of the news and you know, although they went, obliged to consult with open a eyes, major investors Just not getting their buy-in, didn't really do the many favors and, as I said, microsoft put 13 billion into the company and other investors. Where there are the who's who of the investing world, there's Thrive, koshla ventures, tiger global, andre sin, harrod, sequoia, k2. I mean it is literally the who's who of that place in Silicon Valley. What's it called Sandhurst drive or something like that. So all the big VC firms they were all in and day two I presume alongside Microsoft were completely shocked.

Michael O'Mahony: 11:53

Yeah, and I guess. Well, let's talk about the structure for just a second. So basically, open AI is ultimate goal is to become a nonprofit.

Emmet Savage : 12:01

Yeah, that's it.

Michael O'Mahony: 12:02

That's like a very quick summation of it. So I think the structure now is that Microsoft will eventually own 49% of the company.

Emmet Savage : 12:12

Yeah, that's right.

Michael O'Mahony: 12:13

And then it'll run through until a certain point and then it eventually becomes non profitable. I think that's a self-awareness of what they're doing in terms of AI and its applicability in the future and why it should be almost a Public kind of asset rather than being held in the hands of for profit businesses, and that's self-awareness of what we're really sitting on something huge here. It's probably what fed into this as well, and maybe, looking at Sam Altman, when he did the famous investor day and he was showcasing off all the chat, gpt, new functions and stuff and the the, the commercial side of things really spooked people as well. So you can you can see why, in a sense, that the board members got spooked, especially considering where they're coming from. A lot of them are scientists. They're not there to kind of nurture the business side of things at all, bush I but to do it in the way they did, it really really exposes them and probably takes A number of steps back in terms of their goal and mission as well. I think a lot of people are saying this will probably give Sam Othman a lot more power.

Emmet Savage : 13:21

Yeah, that's right, I mean. What I find almost amusing was that on Friday, at a Horizon Live event, I was asked what are my predictions for next year? And I said, well, I think Bing is going to take quite a bit of market share of Google because it is effectively the back end search engine for chat, gpt, and I laid out my thinking for that particular argument and then the next day I was like, well, there goes open AI and there goes, it's reliant on Bing. And now I'm back in the game. I have some really clangors where I made a prediction that went wrong an hour later.

Michael O'Mahony: 13:56

But I thought this was just a new record. That was a little bit too immediate. Yeah, all right. So what's the fallout of all of this, what's the big deal and why should me, or you or listeners, care about all this?

Emmet Savage : 14:09

Well as of last night, the kind of future of AI was I wouldn't like to say change, but very significantly augmented. And for start, chat, gpt, or rather open AI, is tool that 100 million people use in their job and in their school and at home, and this is something that isn't just a pedestrian piece of software. It really has permeated businesses and lives all over the world, so suddenly, this was at risk of being pulled from under our feet. I think. More interestingly, though, is that there are thousands of businesses out there that have built their proposition and a product and their entire business on the chassis that is open AI's infrastructure. We're seeing all these smaller AI businesses bubbling up everywhere. You can't even surf social media without being hit with some kind of variation of what is open AI. Since 2019, microsoft and Open AI, which was founded, as we said, as a nonprofit dedicated to artificial intelligence. They've worked together, and Microsoft I think they invested a billion the year it was founded and then wrote another check in 2021 and up the ante, and they committed and committed and committed and committed, and.

Michael O'Mahony: 15:29

Microsoft have a very unique relationship in that they don't really pay them, they don't really give them money in cash, they just allow them to use the computer power for Microsoft Azure, which shows, I suppose, where the business is at as well.

Emmet Savage : 15:44

It's almost like a kind of symbiotic relationship. Couldn't agree more. There are Siamese twins of sorts and, as you said, the Azure data center runs all the stuff that Open AI is built and it's an allergist thing to say here's one, here's 50 euro pocket money. Oh, by the way, this week's rent is 50 euros.

Michael O'Mahony: 16:07

That's a good one too, right.

Emmet Savage : 16:10

Yeah, but the crux is that Microsoft is working on its own in-house large language model and this is where my understanding of who ultimately owns the code base. In a world where AI I mean, say, chat, gpt and Open AI disassembles, who owns that intellectual property? And Microsoft have their own in-house team. The thinking as of last night was that if everyone at Open AI jumps ship and heads to Microsoft, they're going to abandon the world's largest language model, so that doesn't make any sense, and building a new one from scratch at Microsoft which I wouldn't say is quite from scratch it's slow and it's expensive, and you can see why this was and still is a very strategically important part of Microsoft's future potential.

Michael O'Mahony: 17:02

Just on that. I think what it also exposed is maybe there's less of a moat in AI than we might think. When we were here and the CEO and a couple of people not a couple of people there was a lot of people might leave from Open AI to Microsoft. They were like, oh, that's Open AI done and that's Microsoft as the forefront now and I know that the companies are so close and it's tough to say, moving from Open AI to Microsoft. But in thinking along those lines, what if Google tomorrow gave Sam Altman off? He couldn't refuse. And now Sam Altman is working for Google and DeepMind. What happens, then? Is Google automatically now the leader of the AI revolution? So I think, in terms of AI and zooming out I think I'm going to touch on this later in the show a bit as well is that AI, in my opinion, will become a technology that is shared and used by those of the deepest resources. Yeah, that's right. With that in mind, I don't think it's going to be any one company leading it. I think it'll be the largest tech companies that can all avail of it the most. You know what I mean and there'll be obviously more intuitive and better applications of it from different players. But in general, I don't think it'll be a huge cause for disruption because I think the access to it will be somewhat universal.

Emmet Savage : 18:39

Bill Mann made a very interesting point, you'll recall on Friday, where he said anything that's code-based has a threat of new entrance that we don't even know about because there's a bunch of kind of open-toed sandalgeek sitting in a garage working on something, whereas he said that there's no bunch of geeks sitting in a garage working on a new X in mobile. If you can compete with code, you've got competitors you can't even see, and I agree with you. But had Sam Altman walked to the extreme opposite side of the room, like Google, you have to believe he'll accelerate their efforts and hopefully make a bar at something usable. But it doesn't mean it's a fast process. But what we do know is that AI is a genuine exponential learning system and you hear over the years exponential growth, which is hogwash. People clearly don't understand the mathematics of exponential growth, but AI's learning is exponential. So the first couple of years are a bit unglamorous. There's not a whole lot of interesting stuff happening, but then it gets better and better and better. But the last few days were a hot mess. But the one thing I would have taken from it was that I would regard Sam Altman, as my mother would have said, like he's a gentleman, the way he dealt with it, the way he handled himself, the way he spoke was with such dignity and leadership. He said in a tweet that his top priority is to ensure that OpenAI continues to thrive and he's committed to fully providing continuity of operations. Certainly, publicly, the guy was very. He exhibited leadership traits that are quite rare and that you wish to find in a business. So certainly, from my observation of OpenAI and its leader its leader again as of this morning, I felt well, that's in good hands and certainly we don't really know if the evil overlord and cyborgs of AR are going to take us over. But isn't it quite interesting that it was a human decision that actually reversed the damage done? It was a human decision that created potential damage and a human decision that reversed the potential damage on something that ultimately and supremely is there to augment human decisions. I thought that was quite an interesting irony.

Michael O'Mahony: 21:10

Yeah well, you're clearly not a conspiracy theorist, because a lot of people were saying it was the robots taking over the board that got rid of Sam Amman in the first place.

Emmet Savage : 21:19

Yeah, they asked you what should we do? Fire the leader immediately. Don't even tell anyone, just do it.

Michael O'Mahony: 21:27

Yeah, we just said before we finish up. Lastly, on the Sam Amman and the leadership side of things, I think it was something crazy like 600 or 500 out of the 700 employees offered up their resignation in tandem with them. Now that says a lot. It also, I'd say, all those 505 people, or whatever number ended up being, are pretty secure in getting jobs anywhere else they want in the world. I think Mark Benioff was pimping out his Twitter offering job offers to anyone from OpenAI. Did you see that? No, I didn't. He's basically like there's an open job offer right here, right now, if you want to sign anyone from OpenAI to openAI.

Emmet Savage : 22:11

Wow.

Michael O'Mahony: 22:12

I think one of the higher ups in OpenAI is that I don't think the company that brought us Tableau is going to bring in artificial general intelligence anytime soon.

Emmet Savage : 22:24

Well, you did see the caliber of Altman's friends as well, not only his personal integrity, which is all things like his, brian Chesky and other people from the Y Combinator crew that actually have built something great, all jumping to his defense, which I thought added credence to his integrity, I suppose put a spotlight on the naivety, if you like, of a board just said hey, you're fired, while the chairman was off having a cup of coffee.

Michael O'Mahony: 22:51

Yeah, of course, fireman. While you man isn't looking, he was on Twitter live reacting, unbelievable.

Emmet Savage : 22:58

Absolutely unbelievable Right. Look, Mike, let's move on. So let's look ahead to 2024, and we have a few areas we're covering over the coming weeks. But I'm going to hit you specifically with two easy-ish questions. So the first one I'd like to hear from you is what stock or industry are you not worried about at all next year?

Michael O'Mahony: 23:22

Yeah, this one goes against the grain a small bit because obviously people's major concern right now around the market is how top heavy it is. We talked about this at length at the Horizon event, where the S&P seven which was at the magnificent seven, or the S&P seven, whatever you want to call it Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Tesla and Nvidia is up. Is it about 105% on average? Yeah, this year the S&P 493 is up about one or 2%. So the market's been completely dominated by this very specific order stocks all within basically the same industry as well, and obviously that's of a major concern because the market becomes completely dependent on a very small number of businesses. But I'm actually not that concerned. I'm going to discount Nvidia and Tesla here because those valuations are out of control. But the other five the original kind of fang stocks we'll say I don't know what we'd call them now, but that big tech cohort I'm actually not that concerned about. I think, they're probably the five of the greatest businesses we've seen in the last 20 to 30 years. So you take a quick look at their valuations. Apart from Microsoft, which obviously went through all this open AI stuff and is in line to inherit 49% of possibly the most exciting and interesting startup in the world, the valuations are not controlled at all. So Apple is a bit ahead of its five-year average. But Google, amazon, facebook they're all right there. I know Amazon you can't really look at earnings, but it's actually a cash flow. It's actually a cash flow. Valuation is well below its five-year average. So nothing is stretched there. And if you kind of zoom out and think about what we mentioned about AI and what businesses will probably end up being the biggest beneficiaries and it's probably the businesses with the deepest resources you're not going further past that. Add into that the cloud side of things. So Microsoft, amazon and Google are the three largest cloud providers. So if you take all that into account and you take in the tailwind that that will bring as well, and the need for more computing power and the need for more operational power, it all kind of feeds into these companies that At first glance it looks like a kind of bad spot to be in, but I'd much prefer those five companies to be worth whatever a collective $10 trillion than something like Coinbase being worth $20 billion, do you?

Emmet Savage : 26:15

know what I mean.

Michael O'Mahony: 26:16

If we're to rely on those color bearer businesses staying where they are, maintaining these levels of valuation and revenue growth and profit growth. I don't think it's in the worst situation, which is pretty good for the overall market because we've seen how dependent it has become. So, yeah, I'm definitely discounting Tesla and Nvidia. I think Nvidia will get into in a bit, but Tesla has just made anyone who's really comment on it look foolish in recent years, yeah, and even recent days. Yeah, yeah, I still don't back my horse on top of that. But yeah, that's kind of my take, not like that I'm diving in and buying hand over fist. But the question was kind of worded or what I'm not worried about, and surprisingly it is big tech. So what are your thoughts on that?

Emmet Savage : 27:11

Well, it's interesting the median market cap of the Magnificent Seven is about $1.6 trillion. So those seven businesses have a median value of $1.6 trillion, whereas the $493, to do the math in my head but the other $493, their median value is $50 billion. So $1,600 billion median versus $50 billion median for the other $493. As you know, I've put my vote down. That were on, I wouldn't say, the eve of a small cap rally, but small caps have never been so cheap. So I would agree with your sentiment. I think that five of those seven are as safe as you could possibly imagine. Possibly all seven, because I wouldn't necessarily agree with you. I can see Tess are on the back foot at the moment with the repricing of EVs and also seems to be a mood change in EVs on the whole and with the Chinese competition coming in from BYD. So that's a business that seems to be going through some strategic challenges. But I would actually say, with possible exception of Tesla, definitely agree that the other six are safe. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I'd just say I think the seven are safe. Tibet against Tesla has never been a great thing and I wouldn't do it now. So I actually agree with you fully. I bet would be that we are going to see a small cap rally in the year ahead. What's the catalyst? Is the question? Well, the catalyst is very simply history per se. It's that there has never been such extreme value in that cohort of quality businesses that have, on the whole, kind of dropped between 50% and 90% and value in the last two years and, on the whole, improved their businesses over the last two years. And historically that is always a recipe for a bull run in a category and even when you look at the multiples of small caps versus large caps or mid caps, indeed, they are way, way cheaper. But yes, I agree with your point. But if the question was asked of me, I would have said there's going to be a small cap rally.

Michael O'Mahony: 29:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's flip it around.

Emmet Savage : 29:31

Flip it around. Inversely, are there any stocks that you would keep on a short leash in 2024? What are you cautious about?

Michael O'Mahony: 29:39

Yeah, two, and both could make me look very foolish, but I think we should separate stock and business when we discuss this now, and the first is Nvidia. So I'm very sure to separate Nvidia and Tesla out of my first answer, because we just saw Nvidia report yesterday and we're not going to dive into the numbers, which were outrageous. It's tripling revenue across the board and growing absolute gangbusters. But after all that and that earnings report yesterday, stock is down in pre-market trading right now. You know what I mean. If you're a company and you triple revenue like you did and you delivered a quarter like that, you'd be expecting a 10, 20% bump, the stock to be down. I think kind of proves my points. And if you're to go after Nvidia now, I think you would be chasing the hype and as we've seen, especially since COVID and the years after that, hype chasing really doesn't turn out profitable in the end. There's more to it as well. I think competition would intensify. Right now Nvidia is pretty much seen as a pure play and it owns this I wouldn't say monopolistic market share, but a dominant market share in the market. That is obviously one of the hottest ever right now. Ai I've seen hype like this before but I don't know if it's been as palpable and Nvidia very much seems to be the one true bet in the space. I don't think that can. Last Microsoft already announced they were developing their own AI chips. Amd have popped their head up as well, while the tailwinds for the business there are going to remain and the business is going to go from strength to strength. I think the stock itself will take a bit of a, a bit of a reset, we'll say. Its valuation will come down and it won't be seen as a pure play anymore. and yeah yeah, suffer as a result, but not to say that it's not a great business and that it won't do well in the future, because I think it absolutely will. We've seen from this quarter I love it, bush that it's just become too hypey. And then, basically for the exact same reasons, I'm gonna throw novo Nordisk in as well. And this is just because I got I only got to the ends in. Yeah, who financed? When I was researching this question.

Emmet Savage : 32:14

So the maker of the panacea is a govia ozampic as theirs, which was but no one.

Michael O'Mahony: 32:20

Nordisk has both we. Govian is empty is no one, or is it Ozampic?

Emmet Savage : 32:25

oh, I thought they were competing companies. Smell, smelt, the tide or something. Is the name of the chemical compound. Go and tell me.

Michael O'Mahony: 32:32

GL, gl. One sat there. Yeah, yeah, do you want After? The exact same reasons. Basically, I think there are those tailwinds there and this business will continue to do well. It has the market leader in what for many people see is this just new must have drug. But for the exact same reasons, I think it won't be seen as a pure play for much longer. Eli Lilly has already brought out a and it's not because, remember, ozampic is still seen as a diabetes drug. Yeah, eli Lilly has specifically brought out a weight loss drug that has just been approved by the FDA and if that comes to the fore, we'll see that. You know Novo Nordisk didn't have the same kind of patent protection and and complete monoplastic power that investors probably saw, so Similar to Nvidia. I think the business will still do quite well and the tailwinds will remain that weight loss. The momentum there for that weight loss drug is huge. We've seen it. You know McDonald's and Coke are losing billions of market share because of the word ozampic being thrown around and a couple of investment analysts kind of trying to sound smart for big long-term trends. But I think it'll become a much more competitive space and I think if you missed the rally I wouldn't go chasing it now. So those, so those two Could very much make me sound very foolish and they could be the two biggest companies in the world Next year and the Danish Chrono could be the most valuable currency in the world. But but yeah, I, I personally wouldn't go chasing them. I think I think the hype is Very much real and, yeah, I think it'll subside eventually maybe not.

Emmet Savage : 34:24

Nordisk is the most valuable European companies and that right Could be. Yeah, I believe it, I think it is, but do you know? I just slightly off topic, but you know anybody who's on either of those drugs are doing? Has anyone declared to you that they're on what? Either ozampic or we gov.

Michael O'Mahony: 34:43

No, I don't think it would be a very Irish thing to Start announcing that to people with him.

Emmet Savage : 34:48

Yeah, no, I mean, it really is being held as a panacea we're read reports about it stops biting nails and it reduces OCD and it Like, it's like. What does it not cure? What does it do to the human body over the long term?

Michael O'Mahony: 35:04

Absolutely, and that's the thing. If this isn't really tested at all, you know, if this is a Whatever it is, a daily or weekly injection, constant exposure to this specific drug, how does that play out in the long term? So that's another concern you could have with it. I am not thinking that far out. I just think that there will be competitors and I think the space will get a bit busier now, as it always tends to do. What's what's the time? Your margin is my opportunity.

Emmet Savage : 35:31

Yeah, for sure. I mean it's. It seems to be. Quite. I know if you've struggled with weight your entire life and you just feel broken by it and there's nothing more you believe you can do. You've tried dieting, excuse me. You've tried special exercise plans. This injection certainly would be very appealing, but then when you think about taking injection once a week for the rest of your life, that makes you feel nauseous. It's not the most pleasant journey, but it's probably seen as the better of two routes. Yeah, I, I'm keen to see how this story plays out the ozampic story plays out, because if it doesn't have Long-term negative side effects, or if the negatives are way smaller than the positives, yeah, we could be on a long term. You know a secular bull with this particular investment, but I don't know enough about it and I'm not interested in it.

Michael O'Mahony: 36:21

Yeah, yeah, I've been thinking along the same lines.

Emmet Savage : 36:23

Right.

Michael O'Mahony: 36:24

Um, I just finished up there now. I think those enjoyable episode I hope everyone did enjoy and thanks for tuning in. But before we finish up, I just want to give a quick word from our friends at Vodafone business. They've recently launched their V hub digital advisory service, offering Irish businesses of all sizes free One-to-one digital support and advice. You don't even have to be a Vodafone business customer to avail of this service. So just search Vodafone V hub to book a call with one of the V hub digital experts and we will leave a link in the show notes for today's episode. Emma, thanks for joining me and remember everyone. If you have any questions you'd like answered or elevator pitches You'd like to tackle, make sure to get in touch. You can find us on Twitter at my washer HQ, on tick-tock at my wall, so you simply just email us a pod at my washercom. You're enjoying the show. Make sure to tell your friends about us and don't forget to leave a review for on whatever Podcast platform you listen to us on. Thanks for joining us today and we will talk to you next week. I just want to give a quick word from our friends and sponsors at Vodafone business. I used to think of Vodafone business is only a reliable provider of mobile and broadband needs, but they're really stepping up to help Irish businesses grow and flourish in an increasingly digital world. So they now offer a whole array of digital apps, from productivity tools and security solutions to IT support and even website builders. More recently, vodafone have launched their V hub digital advisory service. With its new service, irish businesses of all sizes Can you free one-to-one digital support and advice tailored to their business by simply booking a call with one of the V hub digital experts On the Vodafone business website. Search Vodafone V hub for more information.