Prof G Markets: Is Boeing a Buy? AI Picks & Shovels (and Scott’s Ketamine Trip)

Scott shares the most impactful parts of his recent (and totally unrelated to the markets) ketamine trip. Then George Ferguson, senior Aerospace, Defense, and Airline analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence, joins the show to break down what Boeing’s crisis means for the future of the company and its competitors. Finally, Scott and Ed take a look at an AI-adjacent investment area that’s starting to get a lot more attention. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:00Scott Galloway?

  This week's number 25. That's the percentage of daily trading volume on Robinhood that happens overnight. True story, Ed. The founders and investors in Robinhood Sequoia Capital are total mendacious fucks exploiting a flaw in young men's brains that makes them more risk aggressive and prone to gambling addiction.

• 1:28Scott Galloway?

  How are you, Ed?

• 1:29Ed Elson?

  That wasn't very funny.

• 1:30Scott Galloway?

  No, it's not funny. I like to mix it up. I like to mix it up.

• 1:34Ed Elson?

  Yeah, it's good. I'm doing very well, Scott. How are you?

• 1:37Scott Galloway?

  I'm seeing the world more clearly after my ketamine trip on Monday, which you didn't ask me about.

• 1:41Ed Elson?

  Yeah, well, I'll ask you now. How was that?

• 1:43Scott Galloway?

  Well, first off, I'm in love with you, Ed.

• 1:50Scott Galloway?

  I'm still processing.

• 1:52Ed Elson?

  By the way, sorry, was this your first psychedelics experience?

• 1:56Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I had never done psychedelics before. I have done a lot of marijuana, a lot of drinking. I've done mushroom chocolates. I've done X a few times, not a lot, because I liked it so much. I thought this is something I could do a lot, a lot, and that's probably not a good idea, so I don't do it very often. But it was my first ketamine injection in a clinically controlled environment at this place called Koya or Kuva in Austin. And by the way, it's a great environment, great firm, or a great setup. I think it'll be really successful. The downsides were I had some anxiety around things that had happened to me in a couple of weeks recently, interactions with people, I didn't feel like I handled myself very well. And those kept popping

• 2:39Scott Galloway?

  up. And that was more a function of just the timing. I think those aren't profound things. But I did have some anxiety. And also, ketamine therapy has been shown to be really helpful for people with PTSD and suffer from certain depression or addiction problems. And I would absolutely say, if your doctor recommends it, then by all means, consider it. If you are not good at drugs and experienced with drugs, and I mean, having had enough experience with drugs, where you have gotten way too high, and been really freaked out. But, but what happens is you're going to be fine. This is happening a few times. I've smoked enough pot and then on the drugs, I'm like, I'm too high, I want

• 3:19Scott Galloway?

  off this train. And what you find is despite the fear, you are fine. And having that confidence that everything's going to be okay, is what kind of what I call, what I refer to as being good at drugs. If you don't have experience with drugs, and you had, a doctor has not prescribed this, I would not do it, because there's just no getting around it. There was some portions of this experience, that were uncomfortable verging on terrifying. And to not be able to say, get me off this fucking thing, was really scary. So I wouldn't take this lightly. I wouldn't do this just as like a recreational activity for a Friday afternoon where you're bored. You know, you go down these very deep rabbit holes, physically,

• 4:04Scott Galloway?

  you feel very comfortable, but very heavy, and you're not, people have described it as floating through space. For me, it was, space was kind of flying by me. And the visuals were so intense, and so colorful, and so overwhelming, I had to take off the blindfold at one point, just to get recalibrated. And I'm not exaggerating, the walls were breathing.

• 4:27Scott Galloway?

  The upside is, for me, it wasn't, it didn't illuminate anything new. What it did is clarify and cement a couple of things. I had these very strong, kind of beautiful 4K ultra-high-definition images of my boys. I have these specific pictures on my home screen and on my, in my camera roll that I love of my boys, and they were like, right there, just these beautiful pictures. And I started thinking about, just, I probably spent most or half of the quote-unquote "trip" or the experience, just thinking about the intensity of my kind of emotion and bond with them. And that's something I didn't know, but it was very clarifying and really kind of wonderful.

• 5:11Scott Galloway?

  And then the other thing that was shocking to me was, my parents never came up. My work, nothing about my work ever came up. Nothing about my childhood, nothing about, none of that. Nothing about my success or lack, none of that. The other thing that came up was their mother, my partner, my wife, popped up several times. And it was like, the way I would describe it is,

• 5:40Scott Galloway?

  you know, did you ever get a gift when you were a kid where you weren't expecting it, and it was something you couldn't afford, something you never even imagined having? For me, it was, I remember I got a $45 Bane skateboard from my mom's boyfriend, Terry, and I wasn't expecting it, and it was just something so overwhelming that I wanted so badly, but I would never have. And it was just like that moment of sheer surprise and joy. My wife kept popping in, and I think, God, I get to like, hang out with this person. I get to have kids with them. I get to build a life with them. And it was like this overwhelming feeling of like, wonderful joy and surprise. And that was very clarifying and very rewarding

• 6:25Scott Galloway?

  for me. The other thing is, I'm a few days out.

• 6:31Scott Galloway?

  That has really been shocking to me is that I haven't had any alcohol. And it's not because I had some revelation that I was drinking too much, anything like that. Something weird has happened, Ed. I've lost the desire for the taste of alcohol. So I'm in LA and I go out every night with friends and I go into any social situation and I start drinking. And I love it. And there's something weird has happened and we'll see how long it lasts. The idea of the taste of alcohol right now is really off putting to me. So definitely some upsides and some downsides. I don't think I'll ever do it again for fear that if it went, if it got more intense and more scary, I just, I wouldn't want to go there.

• 7:16Scott Galloway?

  But it was really a very intense experience. Have you ever done psychedelics, Ed?

• 7:21Ed Elson?

  I don't know if I'm at the age and stage in my career where I should talk about that.

• 7:27Scott Galloway?

  Well, have your friends done it and what's been their experience? Let's, let's couch it that way.

• 7:32Ed Elson?

  Well, one thing that I wanted to ask you about, like the idea of being good at drugs. It reminds me, I feel like the idea of Stoicism is so important on this topic. And the idea of when thoughts and emotions come to you, establishing some distance from them. The idea of not taking them too seriously, not treating them as truth or reality, which I feel like is pretty important. In a situation like this, if you start having scary, bordering on terrifying thoughts. The idea might be in your head, well, this isn't necessarily true. I might not, this, I'm, you know, I'm on drugs. This isn't the accurate perception of reality right now.

• 8:15Ed Elson?

  And I'm wondering if that's kind of what you mean by being good at drugs. And if Stoicism has played a part in your ability to move through those scary experiences. Because that's honestly, that's what I see as the benefit of drugs. It almost teaches you how to, how to cope with crazy thoughts that can happen on drugs or when you're sober. And, you know, if you, when you get through that experience, it's sort of a reminder, actually. I was okay at the end. This too shall pass.

• 8:49Scott Galloway?

  I think that's exactly right, and it's well said. I remember the first time, you know, being too high in college, smoking too much pot. And it was so scary, like, oh, my God, I'm gonna have a psychotic break and someone get me out of this. And do I need to go to the hospital? And I'm paranoid and I don't like myself and I'm scared. And but you come out of that and you realize your your description is exactly the right one. And it's an it can be drawn to larger trauma in life. Or when you're going through a difficult time, this too shall pass. When you mature and you get through hard things, you get through a disappointment professionally, you get through a layoff, you get through a breakup, you know, and you realize you're gonna be fine.

• 9:32Scott Galloway?

  You realize it's just not the end of the world, that you may be feeling like it's the end of the world, but that feeling is an emotion. What was really crazy, though, is you really start separating your consciousness from your actual physical and organic matter. And you realize you're just a blip in time. And just recognizing your consciousness is its own distinct entity. And this is it, and it's not gonna last very long. And everything is about what your response to things, not what actually happens to you. I mean, I just started going down this rabbit hole of just like, Jesus Christ, this is it.

• 10:01Ed Elson?

  Were you talking with the with the guide or was it just silent?

• 10:06Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, it was. He was really wonderful. It was this guy named John, and he's kind of out of Central Casting. He's sort of this nice, approachable guy who does a lot of yoga. And we did some something that was really nice. He's really into breath. We did some breathing just to kind of relax. Because I think if you if you go into this trip anxious, that is not a good idea. And so we did a lot of breathing, calm ourselves down. We even did some stretching, which I found really nice. And what was interesting is the doctor, this, I don't know if she's a psychiatrist. She called herself doctor, so I assume she has a medical degree, who prepped me on everything, came in, gave me the shot, I think. And then we all held hands and prayed.

• 10:44Ed Elson?

  Really?

• 10:45Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, and

• 10:46Ed Elson?

  What did you think of that?

• 10:47Scott Galloway?

  Well, I was thinking 10 or 20 years ago, that would have pissed me off. Because I'm an atheist and I just don't want to hear someone talk about God. But I actually found it quite nice, just three people holding hands and just bowing their heads and saying. You know, something along the lines of, you know, just give us grace, let us appreciate everything here, you know, which is

• 11:03Ed Elson?

  To God or to a higher power?

• 11:06Scott Galloway?

  I think she said, dear God. I mean, she didn't say, Jesus, and like, get up and like, say, cast the demons from this, from this infidel Jewish man who has wandered into our lair. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't like that. Dear Virgin Mary, feel his love, cast out, cast, cast into the darkness.

• 11:26Ed Elson?

  Protect this man.

• 11:29Scott Galloway?

  Yeah. And yeah, no, during the middle of the trip, she said, we're sending you straight to hell unless you upcharge to the Jesus special.

• 11:38Scott Galloway?

  Ah, that's wrong. But it was, I actually found it quite nice. And they put you in basically what is like the coolest escape room. Anyways, there's a guy there and he occasionally checks in with you. And it was weird. I found myself a little bit self-conscious. I found myself asking him about his kids because I thought I was being rude, just thinking about myself and my own ketamine trip.

• 11:59Ed Elson?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 12:00Scott Galloway?

  And I, sometimes I, I wonder if, if it would have been easier if he hadn't been in the room. So I could have just focused on my favorite thing, me and my thoughts. But it was actually, as I think about it, it's comforting to know someone's there. And he's like, if you want to ask any questions, or you need someone to hold your hand, or, you know, be reassuring. And, and I started asking him, you know, I was thinking so intensely about my son. I started asking, he has a one-year-old son, and I started blathering on about, okay, this is what's going to happen. These are the emotions you're going to feel for your son. This is why it's so powerful. And I immediately turned it into, and that was kind of a discovery, I feel a need, and I don't know if it's narcissism or empathy, but I have a need to like immediately ask people a question so I can immediately bust

• 12:42Scott Galloway?

  into, this is how you should run your life and how you should think. And I think some of that is a good thing, but also it's a form of narcissism where I'm like very good at running other people's lives.

• 12:50Ed Elson?

  Or it's like trying to just be useful and valuable to them or something. It's probably trying to Make him feel better in some way.

• 12:58Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, maybe. I don't know, but it you go these observations, but Jesus Christ, it is that shit is for real. I mean, it really they play some music, this kind of nice hippie dippy music like, you know, you get when you're getting a massage at some ridiculously overpriced spa in Santa Fe or something. And I first at first I merely said, I'm like, can I play Spotify? And they're like, no, we have we have our own music here. And I thought it would have been awesome if I played Spotify because I or or I have Pandora and I'm I'm the idiot that can't figure out how to pay for Pandora. So I I'm sure a ZipRecruiter ad would have come on or like something for, you know, something for GEICO. I'm like, how would I have responded

• 13:41Scott Galloway?

  to an ad, a radio ad for GEICO Car Insurance while I'm on a massive hit of ketamine? But it was definitely, um, you know, I'll just wrap here. It was just it's it's nice to take the things you know are important in your life and just to absorb and get lost in just how wonderful they are. So for me, it was on the whole, a very positive clarifying experience. And I promised myself I wasn't going to call anybody or do anything right after because I didn't want to say things to people while I was still potentially under the influence. But of course, the first thing I did was I called my wife and I said, look, you're this is you're my Bane skateboard. You know, this is and of course she was that was that was very meaningful for her.

• 14:26Ed Elson?

  Oh, that's really nice.

• 14:27Scott Galloway?

  All right, get to the news. And now let's talk about the S and P.

• 14:31Ed Elson?

  On earth do we pivot? Let's do it. Let's start with our weekly review of market vitals.

• 14:43Ed Elson?

  The S and P 500 hit a fresh record, the dollar rose, Bitcoin reached a new high, and the yield on 10-year Treasuries climbed. These all feel so irrelevant after that discussion. Okay, shifting to the headlines. Consumer prices rose 3.2% in February from a year earlier. That's slightly higher than economists prediction of 3.1%. The S and P and Dow climbed on that news. Apollo Global Management reportedly approached Paramount for an acquisition. As we discussed in previous episodes, Warner Brothers Discovery recently walked away from talks to acquire Paramount, but Skydance Media and Allen Media Group have made offers for the company. Oracle's stock rose more than thirteen percent and hit a record high on AI-related demand. Oracle also teased a partnership with Nvidia, which is expected to be announced this week.

• 15:29Ed Elson?

  Political ad expenditure on streaming platforms has nearly quadrupled in this election cycle compared to the same time in 2022. Given the current trend, streaming is on track to surpass cable in political ad revenue for the first time. And finally, the House approved a bill that would require ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the US. The bill has received bipartisan support so far, but it now faces an uncertain future as it heads to the Senate. Scott, thoughts?

• 16:00Scott Galloway?

  So the thing I found most interesting was Apollo potentially getting involved in Paramount. And that says a few things to me. So first off, full disclosure, I love the folks at Apollo. I think they're smart, nice. I just, I've done some work with them and I think they're really good people. By the way, I don't have any financial interest in and around Apollo right now, so I have no, not a ton of reason to kiss their ass, but I generally think they're good people. The fact that they're involved, in my view, means this is a broken auction. Because Paramount should go to a strategic player. And we talked about Warner Brothers could take it, consolidate it, cut costs, bulk up on HBO by combining a bunch of stuff.

• 16:41Scott Galloway?

  There's just several players that should arguably step in. Maybe they combine it, Comcast combines it with the universe. There's just several strategics who, quite frankly, could probably pay or justify a greater price, given the, you know, if you will, strategic fit or synergies. The fact that Apollo's here means, in my view, it's probably a broken auction. The price is coming down to levels that make sense for a private equity shop. Because what Apollo will do is come in, the first thing they'll do is likely look at the cost structure. And then what they're going to want to do is figure out the right cost structure, the right strategy, the right management. And they're looking to probably then sell it again in kind of five to seven years. Private equity holders do, they're not afraid of the long term. They like to hold on to stuff.

• 17:26Scott Galloway?

  The advantage of private equity is their money is locked up. But the fact that Apollo's in here means it's going to have to be a quote unquote rational price, otherwise they wouldn't be involved, which means that the players, the strategic buyers who would have paid probably a premium have probably all waved off. Any thoughts?

• 17:44Ed Elson?

  Well, what's strange is that Apollo was talking about doing this back in January, like we've kind of seen this headline before. And then a month later, they said that they're no longer interested. And supposedly that was a concern about regulation because the backdrop on all of this is that the FCC is currently trying to block a deal between Standard General and Tenya, and Tenya is another American broadcast company. So Apollo's concern is that at least was that the same thing would happen here. The question for me is like, what changed? Why have they reversed course?

• 18:17Scott Galloway?

  I can tell you what has likely changed is Sherry's bankers at Paramount said, we need X. And Apollo said, okay, that's we're not going to pay X. Call us if things change. And two or three months later, they called back and said, hey, we should talk again. I don't know. I don't, the regulatory risk or non-risk hasn't changed here. What's likely changed is valuation expectations because we said this when they started this whole beauty contest, when they put a for sale sign in the front yard three or six months ago. Every day that they don't sell this thing, it declines in value. If they don't end up selling, it's going to be really ugly for Paramount and Sherry. It means that no one was willing to step up and buy this asset. It would appear to be depressed prices.

• 19:00Scott Galloway?

  With Oracle, you know, there's AI washing. And then this is what I would call the AI remor of fishing. And that is, everybody's trying to, it's like, I don't know if you ever did this, but in high school, the best way to increase your social status is to throw an amazing party. And so, you know, I was used to say, I had to say to my 16 year old when we were in Florida, I'm like, just throw a rockin' party. And he's like, I don't need, and I would use these words. He's like, I don't need to increase my social status, dad. And Amelia, I feel like he's, he's coaching me.

• 19:30Ed Elson?

  Way cooler. Yeah, exactly.

• 19:32Scott Galloway?

  But the, the equivalent of throwing the great party here. So if you throw a great party, and what, what's the key to a great party is the coolest kids in the high school have to show up. This is that. This is like, I don't know if you saw, but in their, in their earnings and the analyst pulled this up. They kept talking about Nvidia in their earnings call. They mentioned Nvidia four times and they used the term AI 13 times. And so they're basically, or let me summarize Oracle's earnings call, AI, AI, Nvidia, Nvidia, Nvidia, AI, AI, AI. And it worked. The stock was up. And this is a large cap company. I just want to announce that Prop G Media is in a deep, deep, meaningful, strategic relationship with Nvidia.

• 20:17Scott Galloway?

  Yeah. So everybody, everybody wants a little of that AI Nvidia dust around them. And I thought that was, that's purely what this is. I don't know if this is that meaningful, their relationship. Do you have any thoughts?

• 20:32Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm with you in that I'm, I'm always skeptical of any AI posturing, AI signaling, whatever we want to call it. But one thing that makes me actually pretty bullish on Oracle here is, you know, if you look at the cloud infrastructure market, there are four players, basically. It's AWS, it's Microsoft Azure, it's Google Cloud, and then there's Oracle. And Oracle is the only one out of those four that isn't developing its own L L Ms and therefore that isn't competing with other AI companies. So supposedly within the AI startup community, which is obviously growing, there's actually some real incentive to partner with Oracle because you want to partner with the guy who's not going to compete

• 21:15Ed Elson?

  with you. They're all trying to eat Amazon, Microsoft and Google's lunch. They don't have to worry about that with Oracle. And so I think that's sort of the thesis and it's beginning to be reflected in the numbers. I mean, the numbers from the previous quarter were fine, not amazing. But if you look at the remaining performance obligations, which is basically just a metric for signed contracts that haven't been executed yet, but they will be, i.e. future revenue. So remaining performance obligations, that's up 29%. So they're about to see, they have this massive backlog of contracts that are about to be put into effect. They just haven't been reflected in the earnings themselves yet. So, I mean, I'm with you that the standard numbers aren't spectacular. They don't really warrant that

• 21:59Ed Elson?

  massive jump. But in this case, there's significant narrative being sold here. And in this case, I actually buy the narrative.

• 22:07Scott Galloway?

  And that's really interesting. I hadn't thought about that. I like that take that Oracle. I mean, because here's the thing, Amazon, Meta, obviously Alphabet, they're all, they're sick of paying these fees and being totally dependent on this monopoly called Nvidia. And they've all, I think nearly all or nearly all of them have announced plans to go vertical and develop their own chips. So it's interesting, your, you know, your notion that Oracle is in fact a pure play partner for Nvidia that's not, that's not infringing.

• 22:36Ed Elson?

  And for every other AI startup that's trying to compete, yeah.

• 22:39Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, that's, it's, it's funny, Oracle's in my 401k, I'm not sure, I'm not sure how it's done. The TikTok bill, we've been talking a lot about this, passed the, passed the House 352 to 65. And that, it strikes me that if, if this can't go through the Senate, then, I mean, then the House and the Senate, you would think that there'd be some consistency here, that if something passes, nothing passes the House 352 to 65. So I got, I would, I would just think that they'd be able to get 51 votes in the Senate. They don't even need 50, 51, they need 50 because Vice President Harris would vote in favor of it.

• 23:22Scott Galloway?

  There's already news, and I don't know if it's the media, trying to gin up a real fight and create some creative tension so we tune into CNN more. But if something gets that kind of, gets that kind of overwhelming support in the House, I would think it would, I think it would get at least 50 votes in the Senate. Have you heard anything?

• 23:39Ed Elson?

  I don't know how it'll perform in the Senate. I'm not sure anyone does, but one thing that was pretty interesting is looking at who voted against the bill. So from the Democrats, Barbara Lee, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. From the right, Nancy Mace, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene. So it's this very strange dynamic here where you have the extremists on either side coalescing against this bill, and by the way, Trump included. And then the centrists are coming together in favor of it, which is, I don't think that's something I've ever seen before. The other news that I would follow up on, which is more markets focused, I don't know if you saw this, but Steve Mnuchin, who's obviously Trump's former Treasury Secretary,

• 24:24Ed Elson?

  he's putting together a consortium to go in and buy TikTok. Which to me feels like it's an incredible idea. I mean, just capitalizing on this forced sale, which you often talk about is the best time to buy. I'm wondering your thoughts on that and is that something that you would be personally interested in as an investor?

• 24:42Scott Galloway?

  Yes, but I gotta think that I gotta think that the amount of money and capital they're gonna need to raise to do this lends itself to an existing player. Like, to me, it seems like the most likely acquirer should be Microsoft because they have the capital. I don't know if that would run afoul of antitrust if they're the biggest player in AI and now in TikTok, but I mean, the thing is whoever takes it, Mark Cuban made this point that it's worth less to an acquirer because the key to TikTok or the secret sauce is its algorithm. And that's, there's no guarantee that that could be recreated. I don't agree with that. I think that our advances in AI, I think someone could absolutely figure this out and there's so much money on the line here.

• 25:26Scott Galloway?

  I gotta think it's gonna be an existing player that the amount of capital you're gonna have to show up with. Microsoft buys this thing or I don't think could Meta, I don't think they-

• 25:35Ed Elson?

  With Reels, it feels like, no way.

• 25:37Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I just, I don't think it makes sense. I don't think, I don't think the DOJ would let Meta with two thirds share of social come in and take. But it's gotta be someone with massive compute, massive capital, an understanding of AI, someone who's already a letter's D and E, a massive number of engineers. Because there's a lot of people, including all of the CFOs at every big tech company who are thinking, wake up and look in the mirror and say, hello, new owner of TikTok. I mean, this is, the ability, that's very rare that the most ascendant technology platform that has 1.7 billion people already lined up is for sale, assuming that this goes through. But it's gonna go, it's gonna go at a big number and I don't think, I don't think this can be a club deal.

• 26:22Scott Galloway?

  I think it has to be a player that already has huge compute power already. I think, I mean, it's an interesting question, who does it go to or does it go to a consortium? Of people because Microsoft has the capital. If they paid, I don't know, a few hundred billion dollars for this thing, they can do that. It's pretty difficult for other folks to do that. I mean, maybe in this environment, you could raise the kind of money, but you know, we're always, we're so American centric, like is there potentially a consortium of European companies that could come together and say, hey, we're the only ones that won't run afoul of, of, you know, the DOJ, you know, if Biden forces them to sell, but then the Biden administration gets in the way of the sale.

• 27:05Scott Galloway?

  I mean, I'm just as we think it through real time. If Biden says, okay, we're forcing them to sell to an American company, that he's probably, you know, does he call Lena Kahn or Jonathan Cantor and say, and by the way, it doesn't make a lot of sense for us to, to mandate that they have to sell the thing and then to block it, you know, that's just chasing and eating our own tail here. And then streaming gets a boost from political ad spend. I thought it was a bad idea for these streaming platforms to take on advertising. I was probably wrong. It looks like they're picking up incremental income and creating an offering for people who, you know, don't, don't want to spend 10 or 15 bucks a month. So far, political spending is at 164 million. That's up, get this, that's up 266%.

• 27:49Scott Galloway?

  It's almost quadrupled since the same period in 2022. Paramount, Warner, Discovery and Hulu allow political ads. Apple and Amazon do not. This is just, I mean, I remember meeting with Hearst and I thought, God, it must suck to be Hearst, they own magazines. Hearst is killing it. They own all of these kind of information driven assets. They own a, they own Fitch, which is an amazing company in ratings. They own a company that tracks analytics for airline companies or private jets, a subscription company that everyone signs up for. And they own a bunch of regional news stations. And basically, regional news stations are just shitty businesses, except every two years,

• 28:30Scott Galloway?

  they have an absolute torrent of money wash over them because old people do two things. They watch the news, the local news, and they vote. And so they just jack up their rates and every political operative or, you know, any campaign with any money just starts buying up all the time on these local news stations.

• 28:54Ed Elson?

  I wonder if we'll ever run political ads. Do you think Amazon and Apple will change that no political ads policy?

• 29:00Scott Galloway?

  I don't think so. If they haven't changed it already, I don't think they're going to. I don't, yeah, I don't, I don't, honest answer is I don't know, but I can't imagine they would shift this, shift this late. I don't think Apple will, but maybe with Amazon. Amazon are bigger whores. Actually, that's not true. That's not fair. They're both pretty big whores. I don't think so. I think they would have already announced it by now.

• 29:21Ed Elson?

  But we would.

• 29:22Scott Galloway?

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• 29:40Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break with a look at Boeing's crisis.

• 29:54Scott Galloway?

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• 30:37Scott Galloway?

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• 30:57Scott Galloway?

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• 31:42Scott Galloway?

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• 32:26Scott Galloway?

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• 33:15Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. More than two months after a door blew off one of its airplanes, Boeing is still in hot water. Last week, a 787 Dreamliner plunged suddenly mid-flight, sending passengers hurtling to the roof of the plane. The very next day, a Boeing whistleblower was found dead in his car. He was a former quality control manager, and he was in the middle of testifying in a deposition concerning the company's safety issues. So it now seems like Boeing is in a full-blown crisis. The stock fell more than 9% through the week, and year-to-date, it's down 28%. Here to break down the state of Boeing and its impact on the airline industry is George Ferguson, senior aerospace defense and airline analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.

• 33:59Ed Elson?

  George, thank you for joining us.

• 34:01Speaker 05

  Thank you for having me.

• 34:02Ed Elson?

  So this is the second major crisis for Boeing in recent years. The first was in 2019, when two MAX 8 airliners crashed within six months of each other. When you look at this, as someone who's been studying this market for a long time, does Boeing's situation today feel more or less dire than it did five years ago?

• 34:23Speaker 05

  Given that it's coming after the crash and the MCAS problems on the airplane in 2018-ish, I think it's more dire, right? I think that unfortunately, they're coming out of a pandemic and grounding after those crashes to have these manufacturing problems, and that's put them in a very tough spot. I think worse spot than they've been in their history.

• 34:47Ed Elson?

  We discussed this a couple of months ago, when the door actually fell off. We were thinking that maybe this wouldn't harm Boeing long-term, or at least not as much as people were predicting. And a few reasons we were thinking that. One is just the duopoly that they have with Airbus, which seems like it protects them, the switching costs to go to a different aircraft manufacturer, and also the fact that commercial aircraft sales aren't the whole business. It's like 40% of the business. Do you consider our analysis to be accurate there? Are we missing something, or is the situation worse than I just depicted?

• 35:23Speaker 05

  No, I mean, I think that Boeing is fortunate because the business is a duopoly with Airbus. And right now, the supply chains for both manufacturers, while they definitely appear to be doing worse for Boeing, I would say, aren't providing Airbus a lot of flexibility to crank up deliveries, crank up production quickly. And so, what we really see from the outside is that Airbus isn't really able to capitalize very well on this. And Airbus's backlogs are, you know, longer than Boeing, especially for the narrow-body A320, which is the competitor to the 737. You know, when we do the calculations, we think there's

• 36:06Speaker 05

  seven or eight years of backlog in there at least. So it probably means, you know, some of that backlog isn't sort of serially one behind another, coming out the door of Airbus, right? Some airlines have placed orders that take them well into the next decade. But our guesstimate on this is that you'd probably have to wait near the end of this decade to wedge yourself into the A320 delivery pipeline unless they can get their supply chain to work better. And so, because of that, if you're a Boeing customer, the cost of pulling out and switching to Airbus is, I think, just too high, too far down the road. And that's protecting Boeing's market share right here. And so, that's definitely

• 36:49Speaker 05

  a mitigant right now to the problems that Boeing's having.

• 36:53Scott Galloway?

  So, George, nice to meet you. Just a thesis, and you tell me, you nullify or validate this thesis. So, the S and P over the last five years, up 84%, Airbus is up 37%. Boeing's been cut in half. It's down 50%. Is this an opportunity in terms of buying a stock that's been cut in half, but will get through this and return to sort of its traditional, you know, traditional economics?

• 37:24Speaker 05

  So, you know, look, stock prices can be a little bit challenging because there's a lot of things that go into it, you know, fundamentals, the fundamental performance of the company from a financial standpoint, and valuations, you know, component of it. What I will say is, from a fundamental basis, from the fundamental driver of stock prices, their earnings, you know, I think a recovery will happen at the company, right? I think that- Their potential purchase of Spirit Aero Systems here shows you that management is serious to dive deeper into the supply chain of the company, pulling a supplier that used to be, not a subsidiary, but used to be part and parcel of Boeing. You know, it got spun out 20 years ago.

• 38:08Speaker 05

  They want to pull it in so they can control quality in that business and they can make sure that what they're putting out the door, you know, is an airplane that's not going to have the problems that they've had. And so I'd argue that, you know, from a, from a, hey, we're going to build a more quality product and we're going to be profitable, I think that's a step in the right direction to the turnaround of the company. What I will say, though, is I think that the book of business inside Boeing, the backlog, is, isn't as profitable as you would have expected last decade. And the reason I say that is because, one, I think that they're going to have to spend

• 38:50Speaker 05

  a lot more time in their manufacturing business, doing more oversight, controlling the processes much closer, and that means that the cost of manufacturing is going to be higher, at least for a number of years here, while they make sure they stabilize the manufacturing process. And the, and the second issue here, I mean Boeing's had a bunch of these issues filtered through the company. Coming out of the pandemic, if you recall, for a while, the Chinese were not taking deliveries of Boeing airliners. They started this year, but coming out of the pandemic, they did not, and Boeing went out and essentially sold a bunch of airplanes to some of their core customers, a lot of airplanes to their core customers.

• 39:32Speaker 05

  They were the big Southwest order, the United order, you know, Ryanair's always sort of pulling in a certain amount of airplanes. We think a good portion of those orders were, were placed at really good prices for the, for those customers. And so I think that materially changes the profit characteristics of the book of business right now inside commercial. So I think when you look at commercial and the turnaround, there's still plenty of work to do. I think you're talking, there's long cycles to this business. I think, you know, I think you're going to see diminished deliveries this year below what, you know, consensus sort of thought, um, as they turn around that manufacturing business and as they turn that back on, and I think you're going to start to see

• 40:15Speaker 05

  Better deliveries in 25 and it'll take a while, right, 26, 27 as they try to catch up to Airbus or catch up to even their old build rates that they had in the last decade, which were approaching 60 for the 737. It'll take them a while to cycle it up and it's just not going to be the same margins. And at the same time, not to throw more on this whole discussion, that defense business, you rightly mentioned that, you know, commercial isn't all this business. That defense business is underperforming as well because of a number of fixed price contracts they, they put on the books and those are going to take a couple more years to, to clean up and start to improve profitability on.

• 40:57Speaker 05

  So you have, I would say, two of the three cylinders, if, you know, if this was a three-cylinder engine in this business that aren't really going to function well, I think, to get into the 25 and 26. But is the company going away? I don't think so.

• 41:11Scott Galloway?

  Does this present an opening? I recognize this as a capital manufacturing intense business. You can't just spin up a commercial jet manufacturing business. Are there, is there any opportunity to take advantage of this, what appears to be an opening in the market? Could a Bombardier or a Gulfstream or a Dassault or, I don't know, name the company, go upstream and start producing commercial jet airliners?

• 41:34Speaker 05

  Those companies are very capable companies and I think Bombardier, you know, for example, proved their ability to, to design, build and launch a larger airliner when they built the, what they called the C Series and Airbus bought later on and called the A220, a great airplane. But I think that there's a couple of things we should bear in mind here. One is, I think you'd have to have that product ready to go now to capitalize, right? Because if you're going to go into the engineering, you know, rooms and start to draw that, that airplane up, I think you're a decade away from building something, right? Or maybe seven or eight years. So that's the real problem in this business.

• 42:18Speaker 05

  The barriers to entry are huge. It would just take too long unless you had something ready to go. And I would say the second side of that is, if you recall when Bombardier built that C Series... Boeing and Airbus absolutely honed in on them in sort of the competitive landscape. They came in, they bid the smaller size of their narrowbodies against that airplane. You know, we believe that they they dropped prices on those smaller narrowbodies a lot to knock Bombardier out of that market. And Bombardier ultimately sold the program to Airbus for a dollar after Boeing and Airbus just sort of beat them up in the marketplace for years to keep them out.

• 43:02Speaker 05

  And I mean, it's something not to be underestimated. If you have an airplane that's already built, you've already done all the engineering on it, you've already done all the tooling on it, you can bear more pain in the marketplace by discounting to keep other other participants out than than the new entrant can, right? Because they're typically burning cash as they design a new airplane, they tool up and they start ramping up production. It's really hard to break in. And so I think those those items keep another competitor out, except for the Chinese, which already have an airliner in the marketplace. But I think that's a Western acceptance of that airliner is still years away to, you know, half a decade away at at least, I think.

• 43:47Ed Elson?

  When we were discussing this earlier this week, we were pointing out that there's been this downstream effect on the airline stocks. So last week, Southwest shares sank 13%. And that was basically because they announced that they're going to get fewer shipments from Boeing. They were supposed to get 79 planes this year, it's going to be 46. United had a similar thing, their stock dropped 2%. And when we were trying to figure out, okay, what's the disparity here? It's basically that 100% of Southwest's fleet is Boeing, and for United, it's 80%. And then you look at the stocks that weren't really affected, it's like Delta, for example, Delta's only half Boeing. So there's this interesting thing that I hadn't thought of of supply chain diversification,

• 44:32Ed Elson?

  basically. And I'm wondering if that plays a big role in your airline analysis? And do you think that having a healthy balance between Boeing and Airbus is something that investors should be focused on right now?

• 44:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I think it depends what your airline type is, right? If you're a big full service. Uh, hub and spoke carrier like Delta, American United. Uh, your operations are complex enough that you can bear having two fleet types in there. And so diversification, you know, some of each one in, in your, um, in your portfolio of airplanes, if you want to call it, is absolutely a positive when you get into situations like this. And I agree, I think you've seen that, you know, American has a nice mix. Delta is very much an Airbus shop. There's still some Boeing stuff around there. And those two stand to capitalize potentially if there's a shortage of airplanes in the, in the US market this year. And we, we've seen this before.

• 45:29Speaker 05

  We saw this where, you know, Southwest pre pandemic was having problems getting delivery from Boeing on the new MAX and other airlines capitalized on it. When it comes to low cost airlines though, I think that the ability to drive down costs with a single fleet type is probably is paramount frankly, right? Because those airlines really, you know, they really cut costs to the, to the bone with their ability to streamline operations and having all the same fleet type and be able to, to allocate pilots to airplanes, not worrying about what the airplanes are and what the pilots rated, I think does a lot to ease their operations and keep costs really low. And so there's a couple of different airplane engine challenges that are rolling through

• 46:14Speaker 05

  the US market that if we get tight on capacity, if demand is really good this summer and these folks can't get airplanes or have to put them down, means that the, the airlines that are not flying those will absolutely capitalize and could have a pretty good summer. And one of the things I read from Southwest was not just a Boeing problem, but if you read into their one Q adjusted guidance, they step changed down in what they thought they were going to get paid per seat mile that they put in the air. And part of that is because they're not seeing near term demand as strong as they thought. So we'll see those two things are playing out right now in the US airline market. We're watching them closely right now.

• 46:57Speaker 05

  I don't think the airplane issue is going to be as, as important as the economy and general demand, but we're watching it.

• 47:04Scott Galloway?

  So just last question, George. From a consumer standpoint, you know, I'm, I'm fascinated with aviation and I've, the only thing not perfect about my life is I've spent way too much time on planes. And I look at, I look at my phone, I look at media, you know, it just, everything's changed so dramatically. When I look at the flight experience 50 years ago, when I took my first flight with my dad versus now, it's disappointingly similar. And while I know there's been huge efficiency gains and costs of, I think on an inflation adjusted basis have come way down. What do you think of the likelihood that we're going to have supersonic travel in the next decade or so? And specifically, do you know anything about Boom Technologies?

• 47:48Scott Galloway?

  Just because I'm an investor there. Do you think that supersonic will see a renaissance of fuel?

• 47:54Speaker 05

  So I haven't spent a lot of time on Boom, but we've absolutely thought about supersonic. I'll tell you what my impression is of this. I'm sad to say that I'm not going to be, I'm not going to tell you that the next new age of flying, supersonic flying is coming. It's right around the corner and we're all going to have, you know, a blast going out there across the Pacific in half the time and then across the Atlantic in half the time. So the big challenge in this business is getting the consumer to pay up for that supersonic travel and enough of those consumers to pay up to be able to build those airplane fleets in size. And so if you think about a wide body airplane from Boeing or Airbus,

• 48:38Speaker 05

  wide body, remember means probably have two aisles in it rather than the, you know, A327, 37 or single aisles, one down the middle. You got two, you got a lot more people inside that tube. The typical wide body airplane designed and built by Boeing and Airbus, a successful one, has over a thousand units built, right? So you typically, you see 12, 13, 1400. That usually gets them into the, into the, let's call it the green zone, the profitable zone. You know, for the cost it was to, to design it, tool up for it, build it. You know, what we saw with the Concorde. It was great technology. It's old technology now, but they, they built what?

• 49:23Speaker 05

  They built less than twenty. I think they built, uh, you know, somewhere in the, I think they got over ten maybe or so. You can't, you can't get the economies of scale you need for manufacturing to drive down costs building in those sizes. You gotta get up in, like I said, into the, into thousand plus. And right now, I still don't think you have enough demand for supersonic travel to get the numbers you need in the ma- on the manufacturing side of the business. One of the challenges too is like, you know, if you think about when we go to Europe. If we, if we, you know, we're all here on the east coast. You go over to Newark at a Kennedy, you get in an airplane, you get a lie flat seat,

• 50:08Speaker 05

  which you probably pay less for than supersonic travel. You and I get in that tube and we, we lie down. Seven hours later, we're landing in, in London. We almost don't care. We don't wanna be there in four hours 'cause we'll be, you know, I guess we'll be in London at, uh, you know, at four AM their time or something like that. We'll say, hey, what, what was the gain? The gain was I didn't get a full night's sleep. I paid a heck of a lot more money and now I'm stumbling around London at six AM waiting for businesses to open. So right now, I think on transatlantic, I think lie flat, I think the services you have work pretty well. I don't know that I would pay up for transatlantic, uh, on a supersonic. Into Asia, yeah, it, the, the distances are a lot larger.

• 50:52Speaker 05

  So I think I'm ready to pay up on an Asia trip, seventeen hours to Singapore. It's a heck of a lot of time. We'd have to see fuel burn and see how far they could get and where they'd have to stop. That could be a limiter, but right now, I, I just don't see the technology having progressed enough to change the equation on supersonic. I don't, I just don't see the size. But it's like a lot of things in aviation, we start going there. Some people run out of money. Some ideas die for a little period of time. It's the seeds that that are replanted next and grow again, and we try again. And at every iteration, I think we learn more, take costs out of the equation, develop the idea. The day will come.

• 51:37Speaker 05

  I just don't think it's in the next. I don't think it's in the next decade.

• 51:41Scott Galloway?

  I think it's great analysis, but that frame where I justify my investment is, and I think you're looking at correctly, looking at a consumer. My sense is one of the fastest growing demographic is billionaires. We've gone from 500 to 2,500. We're probably going to have 10,000 in the next five to six years. The average age of a billionaire is 69. These guys have more money than time. If I'm a billionaire, I'm buying supersonic. I actually think the market is for billionaires, not for, not for commercial aviation.

• 52:11Speaker 05

  A supersonic biz jet could probably do better than a supersonic commercial jet. I, I get it, but all those guys have private jets, right? So they're all, those are the guys that are buying the Gulfstream 650 ER.

• 52:25Scott Galloway?

  That's right.

• 52:25Speaker 05

  700, 800, the Bombardier 7500. They're bringing their own airplane to the game and they'll pay up. They'll pay 75 million for a Bombardier 7500 or a Gulfstream 700. 75 million more than a commercial airliner. Cause like you said, time matters to them. Time matters a lot to them. They're willing to pay for it.

• 52:45Scott Galloway?

  George, this was great. Thanks for your good work and we really appreciate your insights.

• 52:50Speaker 05

  Appreciate it.

• 52:52Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break with a look at AI compute power.

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• 55:19Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof you markets. A few weeks ago, we discussed Nvidia's run up in the markets and asked what other downstream picks and shovels could benefit from AI. There will likely be many, but there's one area in particular that's been getting a lot more attention. Computing power. By 2030, electricity demand at US data centers could triple, using as much power as 40 million homes or the annual energy demand of the UK and Greece combined. Businesses that can figure out how to support that demand sustainably should be well positioned to ride the AI wave. So Scott, people often point to crypto's energy consumption as one of the main negative externalities. Annually, the global crypto industry uses as much electricity as the Netherlands.

• 56:04Ed Elson?

  AI's consumption is poised to eclipse that. What do you make of this problem and what kind of solutions do you think we'll see?

• 56:12Scott Galloway?

  I think this is super interesting. I've never understood, one of the things I've never gotten, I've never understood about crypto is in a world where we see the existential threat is climate change. And we invented a currency, we invented something of our own making that requires the electricity consumption of Argentina. I've always heard Argentina, by the way, in Netherlands, do they use any electricity? Aren't there a bunch of polar bears on treadmills powering everything? I've just never understood that we decided to invent something that we really didn't need that's based on mathematical computations that require the energy of Argentina. Anyways, the, I think this is fascinating. And so the question is, are there knock on or downstream investment opportunities in making AI more energy efficient?

• 56:56Scott Galloway?

  Is company Astera Labs, which has filed for an IPO, they make hardware and software products that increase the efficiency and reliability of data transfers within AI systems. And it has Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, and Intel as investors. Shit, that's a company I like to invest in. I mean, that is the, I mean, crazy, huge trend, boring company, doing really, really hard work. Oh, Disco, Ed Disco. AI and data center infrastructure, a company called Vertiv provides power management and cooling equipment for data centers. Another like stupid fucking boring business. It's going to make a lot of people very rich. And in a typical data center, only 40 to 45% of the energy used is for the actual computing. The rest is used just to keep.

• 57:41Scott Galloway?

  Cooling down the servers, right? Just to make sure that they can operate so they don't overheat. By the way, I remember I was at my, one of my first clients, let's talk about me yet. One of my first clients, the ketamine didn't fix that. It was. No, no, no, no. It's one of the thing I found on my trip through the universe is that it's my universe. We just all live in it. I remember I worked with the COO of, of Williams Sonoma, this guy named Denny Chatlin. And I ultimately ended up putting him on my board because I just found him so practical and thoughtful and strategic. And they had a server room, you know, they built this big e-commerce operation. We actually, believe it or not, yours truly and Profit actually built their first e-commerce site. And they had the server room and it was overheating and the power went out.

• 58:26Scott Galloway?

  And they got Denny on the phone and they said, Denny, what are we doing? He said, is there a window? And they said, yeah, but he said, well, open the fucking window. And they said, we can't, it doesn't open. He's like, okay. He's like, go find a hammer.

• 58:41Scott Galloway?

  And we all looked at each other. I was in the room when they were doing this and they went and found a hammer and they just bashed the fucking window and problems solved. They're like, and I thought that's how you become the COO of a, of a global, like of a Fortune, whatever, 1,000 company is we, in a million years, we were like, oh no, but the window doesn't open. Yeah. It's like, go get a hammer. Open the fucking window. We got whatever, $3 million in servers that are about to explode. Anyways, so the cat is out of the bag. Verid outperformed Nvidia in 2023, rising 269%. Jesus Christ, we're late on that one. Prologis, which is one of my favorite companies of, back to me, a mentor of mine is a guy named Hamid Mogadom, who ran AMB.

• 59:24Scott Galloway?

  And then they merged with Prologis, which I think is the largest warehouse or logistics storage company in America. And they planned their, they announced they're planning to invest $8 billion in data centers over the next five years with the potential to expand to 100 data center projects and a $25 billion investment in the longer term. Like this just makes a shit ton of sense. This is, this is, in my opinion, word is out on the, the big guys, Nvidia's. I think in terms of, if I were a. A fund manager or stock picking, which I'm not recommending you do. I'd be looking downstream at this type of stuff. What are your thoughts, Ed?

• 1:00:02Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I mean, it feels like there are two main issues that are to be solved here when you have compute power growing this rapidly. I mean, it's estimated by 2037, global spend on compute power will be greater than the current GDP of the US, which is $27 trillion. So there are two things to solve. One is computational efficiency. That is, how can you minimize your energy consumption while accelerating inference, decelerating latency? And there are a bunch of companies that are working specifically on that problem. You mentioned several of them, Astera Labs, but there are more Broadcom, Marvel Technology, Parade Technologies, et cetera.

• 1:00:46Ed Elson?

  The second thing is just computational production. Like, how do we just produce and deliver massive amounts of computing power at mass scale? And obviously Nvidia is a huge part of that story. But the way I see it, so are just the plain old energy companies that actually power these data centers. So like Exxon and Chevron, BP, Aramco. Having said that, it's been a very bad year for energy companies in general, especially in terms of their stock price. I mean, the energy index is down 1.5% this year. Compare that to the S and P, which is up like 26%. But it feels as if AI could inspire a resurgence here.

• 1:01:30Ed Elson?

  So I'm wondering if you think that we're going to start to see some renewed interest in energy stocks as people start predicting this massive computing power wave over the next few years. Do you think that we'll see more investor interest in energy?

• 1:01:43Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, you'd think. I mean, it strikes me, energy consumption is just not going anywhere. Every year we come up with new ways to to use energy. It's never like, oh, we have too much. I mean, oil prices will come down, wind prices might come down, whatever it is. But there's never kind of energy just sitting fallow. And the fact that the energy index is down a percent, I would imagine that industry's pretty cyclical and it's probably, you know, not a bad place to park, you know, to park some money right now. So any estimate of energy, energy consumption is up over the next 10, 20, 100 years. The question is, is there some sort of breakthrough that's all of a sudden going to provide massive? And remember a year ago, they announced that

• 1:02:23Scott Galloway?

  they had achieved fission and that is they had figured out a way to, you know, collide two molecules that create more energy than they absorb, but the infrastructure around it was still like 53 times the amount of energy they created. So that number, there's a term for that. That number's going to have to come down until it gets below one. But yeah, it strikes me that, um, I don't know, it's just one of those industries where you feel like that those people are always going to figure out a way to make money.

• 1:02:53Ed Elson?

  All right. Thanks, Scott. Let's take a look at the week ahead. We'll see earnings from Nike, FedEx and Lululemon. We'll also hear the latest interest rate decision from the Federal Reserve. And finally, Reddit is expected to IPO this week. Scott, do you have any predictions?

• 1:03:09Scott Galloway?

  My prediction is that Reddit gets, and this is dangerous, that Reddit gets a fairly substantial day one pop. And it just goes back to, we used to live in an agriculture economy, then a world's trade routes were driven by spices. And then it was, obviously we're in an oil or natural resources based economy. I think we are in an attention based economy. The most valuable firms in the world basically monetize our attention. And if you look at the most traffic sites in America, number three is Reddit. And if you look at those four companies, three of them have a trillion dollar plus valuation and one is going out at a valuation, I think it's estimated about six and a half billion.

• 1:03:52Scott Galloway?

  So if you look at the charts from, I used to love this chart from 10 years ago that I used to show in presentations and it had attention versus ad spend. And so, for example, newspapers were getting 6% of the nation's attention, but they had 15% of the advertising and digital was getting 35% of the nation's attention, but only had 8% of the advertising. And you just knew over time that they would calibrate or they would equalize. And when I look at the third most trafficked site in the United States, going out at 6.5 billion, I think that that has opportunity, and this sounds crazy, but that has opportunity to be 100x in 10 years if they can maintain that sort of attention. So my prediction

• 1:04:35Scott Galloway?

  is Reddit gets a substantial pop on the first trade in the IPO.

• 1:04:40Ed Elson?

  Do you have any thoughts on how they could start monetizing that attention more efficiently and just better? I mean, you look at where it ranks in web traffic, but then you look at its revenue, $800 million in revenue. That's a fraction of all of these other companies you mentioned. How do they unlock that attention and start monetizing it in a substantial way?

• 1:05:01Scott Galloway?

  I think it's about management and the ad stack. And by the way, the exact same criticisms were levied against Meta. I remember our buddy, Bill Cohen, interviewing me on Bloomberg 15 years ago, before the IPO of Meta. And he said, what is this business is this in? You know, the revenues weren't that big. They were growing fast. But this is in some, this is about the ad stack. This is about figuring out a way to target people to the right, you know, right place, right time, right kind of situation and hit them with the right ad. It's about developing crazy ad tools that help advertisers reach the right people in the right context. But it's, I think that is less difficult, I think, than building an offering that gets the third most attention of any website in America.

• 1:05:46Scott Galloway?

  I think they've got the hard stuff done. I think they've done the, I've done, I think they've done the heavy lifting. I think good management, good management, which is, with just with the third most trafficked site in America can figure out a way to get this thing worth $100 billion.

• 1:06:00Ed Elson?

  You'll be buying?

• 1:06:01Scott Galloway?

  I'm going to try. I'm calling everyone I know, trying to get in on, on the IPO. And depending on A, if I'm able to get shares in the IPO, I might not be able to. But if I can, I'll look at what the first day pop is. And if it's not too extraordinary, I will probably buy some shares.

• 1:06:16Ed Elson?

  All right. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our executive producers are Jason Stavers and Catherine Dillon. Mia Silverio is our research lead and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to Prof you Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network. Join us on Wednesday for office hours and we'll be back with a fresh take on markets every Monday.

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