Transcript
Hell yeah. Hey yeah. Oh there you are live from Warren Buffett's. Cash pile. Wow. Really? I want some of that cash. I guess. Well for a live from it. Can we just pocket a little bit? That's how the only thing. That's how the world Works. Matt. It's yeah another manic Monday edition of business pants joined by the Lord of analysts holes. I'm the Lord of that now. Well I kind of forgot what it. What are you king? I'm just just an analyst Justice. You're the one who named me. I don't know. I forgot. And today's swampy ant hill. Oh, again called August 7th. 2023, top nine. Sexy Monday, stories, and director of the week. Yeah, the, we have that number of the week. The board members. Sorry, BM of the week. I'm screwing everything up. Yeah. Like it's almost like you didn't update your copy and today, Um, yeah, we have that today is the Show sponsored by anybody today? No on Monday but it's open for people. We have a, we have a pretty incredible almost a year. Now sponsorship agreement with s gauge. We're looking into to deepening that relationship. So to everybody else, especially in the ESG space, Reach out to us. And just so, you know, if you haven't done your due diligence, skh is not like a guy named Doug. Sorry, Doug, just like, you know, is it has a company. It's like yeah. Paul told us it's like over 100 people over 100. Yeah. They're big deal. They have a lot of governance data. They have a lot of data and it's good. It's my long-winded point. Is that, if they can sponsor us, then you should be sponsoring us. I'm looking at you glass, Lewis. I like your points. Here we go. Let's do the top. Nine story. Let's get over with, let's go all the do. All the musk shit up top. Is that we're starting our Monday? Yeah. All right. The first at X formerly known as Twitter Elon vows to cover the legal costs of anyone who gets in trouble with their boss for their activity, on his social media platform. Yeah, it sounds like one of those valves that's not gonna happen, he's promising to No Limit. No matter what you've done, no matter how heinous you are of an individual. He claims that he will foot the legal bill I if but only if you do it at work, okay, but oh no, no not no, no, I think if you just posted in your free time, if you're just a horrible. He said excrement you can Neo Nazi misogynist jerky and your boss fires you or something right? Elon will swoop in and support the proud boys. Right? Defend them. Is that what he's saying? I I yeah I mean I guess what if what I posted on like X is now gonna be like Prince in 1998 or whatever where it's like the artist formerly known as Prince. What if you for posted on the former Twitter? Something about your boss, former Twitter. Yeah. That like you just hated them and they were horrible human beings and had nothing to do with ideology and then you like accuse them of being free speech baby. Yeah, right. So if you but if you get fired for that, if you said not only like is my company a shithole. But I hate my boss and I wish they were dead. And they are you? Yeah. Musk will cover that. I don't know. I mean, now that you mentioned I probably fell for this like it's probably just another one of his empty vows for as being some kind of company Paul C because I don't know. He's okay, I'm sweating company follows and where and shouldn't this come from City, CEO. Linda yaccarino, yeah, what she wanted to hear her busy. She's moving on a Tesla. A lot going on Tesla. So the, the Tesla executive who the Wall Street Journal said, just a few months ago was next in line to be CEO. And in fact, in the lawsuit, the suggestion there was a suggestion by Board member James Murdoch. Is that the Murdoch family. Yeah. We're on the boardwalk. Yeah, one of the murders there was there was someone in line to be the next CEO of Tesla, you know, he was nice. Yeah. Saying, don't worry, we're not gonna have this crazy person as our CEO, Elon Musk forever. Sure that person CFO Zachary, kirkhorn has just stepped down. Oh, we don't, I don't really know why he's staying until the end of the year. Well, his successor takes over, it's a bit confusing. I don't know. I remember just. Yeah. Just a few weeks ago. Tom Zhu was appointed as the deputy CEO of testing, so that the reason why like I guess, but why this is what I hate about regulatory filings. Why can't they just tell us? You know, Zach is idiot. Zach hates Elon because Elon promises to support the legal bills of proud, boys. I don't know. Just like tell us something. It shouldn't. I mean, we're so focused on shareholder interests for good or for bad. So, I would think that all your anti ESG people would, would join me in this. Like, this is the kind of disclosure you would need at a publicly traded company, right? You're potential. Successor is just suddenly leaving with no, you don't care. I feel like, yes, But also no more thing for me to be a passionate about. Yeah, the things you want to know are like, you know, like where on their shirt they got a spaghetti style and like who makes tuna salad and brings it to the office, right? There's a large correlation of like, when my caffeine kicks in is when I start caring about things, all this new stories uncovering, it's true. I mean, most of this just seems like Like clearly musk as tired of Zach and like, okay. And it's like that. That's okay. A meanwhile at Tesla and just the past 10 days. I decided to go back and look at some of the articles that we've tagged here at freeflow. Okay? This is the same company. Meanwhile, a Tesla there's a bunch of random headlines Tesla under investigation by California. Attorney general over autopilot safety and Market yeah I heard about that Tesla has been exaggerating. Its Vehicles potential driving distance for years by rigging their range estimating software. According to Reuters Elon Musk himself gave Tesla workers to order to do that. Tesla is facing a class action suit. For based on those exaggerated range claims Elon Musk is bringing Tesla showrooms to Native American tribal land to get around local car dealership laws and Tesla is under investigation by US Auto Safety Regulators over complaints that new cars can lose steering control. Yeah we did go in covers all this one feature. All this is going on at a company where there is, there is no real Oversight in place. So, well, it's important what? We talked to, I talked about this with Jesse last week. Musk has mastered if he's mastered anything he's mastered. The Casual indifference to regulated spaces and the active seeking out of unregulated spaces. Well, this is the tech. This is the tech move, created and the late 1990s, right? I mean Twitter is basically, he was born on regulated space. Mars is where he wants to be where this is no regulations, right? But actually, we should pause on the rigging the driving distances. That's a massive deal. Yeah. Because why if you were like think about the so VW had its larger dieselgate and what 2014, 20, something like that, right? Where what they were doing. Was they were lying about the environmental, the emissions of their diesel cars. They were just straight up like about it. Now there's a law about how much emissions the car had could have right? But they were lying about it and rigging it. There's not a law about the talking about the distances but doesn't this feel, isn't this? The same thing as rolling around? We need Ralph later for this. What? This is rolling, a truck down here and saying that it works, this is worse because you're you're potentially stranding, your customers at 2 a.m. on the Highway by on the electric vehicle Market. You buy based on a range consideration, the first thing people ask is how far will it go? That's super thing. Yeah, but even Beyond buying it. You I mean you you know you rely on this day to get your family safely from place to place know, it seems important. I mean I just don't like that. Seems like it's going to be a way bigger deal because anybody who bought a Tesla that said it, the range expected. Range was 250 miles, 300, miles or whatever. Could go back and say we bought this under false pretenses that you've rigged the software. We bought this thinking we were gonna get X. We got we're only getting why? Because you rigged it that way and we want our money back. Can you if people like want to get out? This is your moment. Hey Mega Tesla owners. Yeah, Jesse, just a Tesla owners for the money Whisperer bought it when it was cool to have it. Yeah, this is your out. This is your ass true, maybe. So maybe what you're trying to say is that this is all. So, TS Tesla CFO, Zachary Kirk current out, maybe this is why he's bailing. It might actually be. I mean, there's a lot of things in the last 10 days. All right, moving on, let's talk about Japan. We never talked about Japan. Women in boardrooms, in Japan. They had a commitment by 2030 to have 30% of the boards. Held by you know women which seems laughable when you look at I mean Asia yeah. latest report out of Nick Nick K. Asia. Yeah I saying that, right? Yeah. Then the roughly 1800 companies listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Just 68 of them have already have met the 30% Target. This is a, this is Improvement of only one percentage point from 2021. So Nothing is happening, nothing. I mean. I the problem is they don't have enough women in Japan. That's the problem, right? Oh, just not the problem. Oh no. Yes. And then there's some other problem you're together. There's some kind of a patriarchy. I will say this. Free float analytics data, which is a sponsor of this show. I know you've got to mention them, which I use now daily in my research. Well, they they actually found that when, if you there was a paper from a couple weeks ago, when you look at the influence of women on the board countries that have quotas and mandates about how many women you're supposed to have on the board, have larger power gaps than countries without them. So maybe Japan's just being honest. They're basically saying yeah, we know we have a mandate but we don't want to give women any power at all. So why put them on the board at all? Why have the figment of our imagination? I think what you're saying is that the next generation is even more screwed? Because they're not even, they're not even gonna get people on the board in the first women on the board in the first place to gain experience. Yeah, forget it. Forget it. Nicolas who we were talking about, okay? So I'm going downhill, not gonna spend a lot of time on Nikola because you're covering Nikola, right? I am. Yeah, they named their accent today. Lotta, I don't know. They named their fourth. Which, which accent do I have? I don't even know. It's like later. And who knows here? Like a weird Brooklyn. I'm not Docker or something. Fourth names are fourth CEO and four years. Yeah, that's correct. Oh, you talk about that guy? All right, Sam Altman. Open AI. CEO is already nervous about what AI might do in elections. Here's the quote. I am nervous about the impact AI is going to have on future elections at least until everyone gets used to it. That's he says that parenthetically. Okay, personalized one-to-one. Persuasion combined with high quality. Generated media is going to be a powerful force, just back me up really quickly. Yeah, this is the same Sam Altman. There's not more than one that said AI will destroy Humanity, right? Yeah. Now he's worried that it's gonna be essentially do stupid people which is half the election. Yeah, that's already happened but I feel like a stepping stone to Dooming Humanity at large is dooming elections. I'm not sure that this is different. Like, what? And now he's just nervous. He's just like there's a part. Here's, the sad part is because the the suddenly, you know, the stock market is becoming Disinterested in AI after a bounce after like, already a little bit it seems like but I these stories are kind of just going away. Like, you know, I don't think people are as worried about regulating AIS that should be. I think we're exhausted. I mean, well, that's true. That's it. Is an onslaught of shit to be constantly. We contribute to that. I know we're not helping like I'm gonna make this worse and I think it better. Yeah, make it better. Make me feel better next headline. The sickest day of the year for American workers is coming up this month so what do you feel better? Okay. This is really strange. This is based on Research employee data, lost five years. What do you think this is the most the day that American workers calling sick? The most, if any idea what that day might be, I mean I would have thought it was the day after the Super Bowl like like Valentine's Day. You know I always loved making, I don't know. I think those are better guesses. I was actually Thinking, maybe it's the, I mean, I know it sounds kind of Dopey but the Friday before Labor Day, maybe people want like that, last four day weekend, before that makes sense. No, it's August 24th. I don't get, I don't know, I don't know. I don't get it. Just here. I would ask her to look back into our HR records to see did any of us call out sick ever on August 24th? Wow, I don't know this August 24th is coming up. I'm looking at National today is an is the name of the website I'm looking for, August 24th. Here's some options National Waffle Day. Oh, well, that's good. It is National waffles. And still work. It's also National Burger day. So I don't know how many people are taking burgers and putting them between waffles, right? That's to combine your days, you know. And then you would have to stay home because you basically gave yourself a heart attack and diabetes. You're just yeah I'd say or you just sleepy really its national flag day in Liberia and the Liberian flag looks a lot of something to do with it. Yeah. Uh, but I might have a culprit. It is National knife day. So you think it's a I think there's a lot to advise kind of like murders and and finally, it is National Pluto. Demoted day, it was the day. Pluto was made a dwarf planet so people are surprised. I'm just saying those are and too many cars. Those are real days too many carbs. Too many self-inflicted knife wounds and too much depression over tomorrow. You're just you're home after that. Director of the news. From our database free flow analytics, his name is Anthony welters. He is sits on the board of Lowe's where he has one percent of influence Gilead Sciences. Whereas 8% influence in the Carlyle Group were just two percent of influence was nobody. He is the man cited as the one who gave a Supreme Court Justice Clarence, Thomas, the money to buy his luxury RV. So one of our directors cited the New York Times as giving a Supreme Court Justice money to buy a big stupid vehicle. How many bad look it's about, not great, but how many of the lows Gilead Carlisle shares? Did he sell to get the RV for Clarence Thomas? So I wish we had that information too. See that that is actually more than you know, like the disclosures you want. That's the one I want to know how many RVs did you buy for Supreme Court? Justices with your shares. That's what I don't know. Hsbc's head of public affairs. Again, I pointed this out last year, every executive and director in the UK is a sir Oh, yeah. No, that's his name is Sir. Sherrard Cowper Coles has apologized. I just love when Executives apologize after accusing, the British government of being weak. For complying with us demands to cut back business. Dealings with China. Okay. Yeah. And that's right and let's not forget HSBC gets about half of its profits from China and Hong Kong. Right. Yeah. They're like Hong Kong based. I think they were dual headquartered at one point. Here's what it tickled me. Why included this story? I got into a rabbit hole with this guy, okay, he was the this is Sir Sherrard copper coals HSBC executive. He was the foreign secretary special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. After leaving the foreign office, he worked at BAE Systems as an international defense contract. Right international business, development director, and then he left Bae and became a senior advisor to the, to the chair and the CEO HSBC, okay? Okay, you know what? All so Matt he's all. So the president of the Jane Austen Society, Now, I wait now, okay. Yeah. You want to say something? No good continue. So I looked into the Jane Austen Society, it's a turns out despite being founded by a woman in 1940 and being billed out recently, by another woman, the co-founder of Cisco Systems Hey, there's eight people, eight people in leadership. Six of them are men. What I am. Sorry, I know, it's like, I'm gonna be a little bit too a little too serious with like, gender roles, but even the Jane Austen Society has to be dominated by by male Executives. Everything every board, everything everywhere has to be And they're it's sir, it's a it's a surge, how many of the people who lead the Jane Austen Society are all so serves. Do you have that stat? Know, all right. That's moving on. What should you know what? It should be apologizing for, is the huge female power Gap at HSBC. 15% 15%. Yeah. I mean, I, I would like from now on, if everything, that sir, Sherrard Cowper coals, which what a name? Everything he says, as the head of public affairs at HSBC, it starts with a quote from Sense and Sensibility, that's what I think would make round this out. The good news is that that one of the two women, who they actually let have a say at the jailhouse Society, she is the honorary secretary. That was nice. Uh, two more stories. Tyson Foods, expands chicken, plant closures after reporting. A almost a half a billion dollar quarterly loss. That's a lot in a quarter. Half a billion dollars. Yeah, well I don't like the way that headline is written expanding closures. It's it's I don't know why confuses me. It's like, yeah, I hear what you're saying and I only pointed out the story because it's fun to remind people that they're CFO. This is all an excuse to talk. Yeah. Oh, excuse cases, the first time you're ever listening to this show CFO over Tyson Foods publicly traded company. John R Tyson. Who's daddy, John H Tyson is the chair of the board. That's true. He a few months less than a year ago. He was arrested after drunkenly entering, random woman's home and sleeping in her bed. Yes. And before he was became CFO at Tyson Foods, he was their Chief sustainability. That's right. That's always makes me laugh. Yeah, and I'll remind you before you say something too, Tyson family members control 66% of the board of influence according to our data free full analytics. That's I that's all I was really gonna say although we do not have we have not built into that model, any sort of debit for drunkenly entering a woman's home and sleeping in their bed. We didn't figure that out yet. And finally, in a story that Matt is very excited about this morning. I Yeah, Zoom. You know, Zoom the the video service that you probably use a lot during the pandemic. Maybe still do panned We're gonna do people but yes, I get it. Although you had an interesting point, a labyrinth on later, but I'll let you talk about this Zoom can now, train its AI using customer data, essentially, according to its new updated terms, that's true. At first. I didn't think this was just like, okay, well yeah, I mean, all these companies do it but you had an interesting point about, About therapy sessions and I act. I the one time I do. You zoom is therapy session. I don't, I actually prefer Google meet for everything, but my therapist uses on zoom and and why is that a problem? Well, so the what Zoom did was they rewrote their terms of service to include. Like, on one little line that says they can also use all the content and transcripts from the use of Zoom to train their AI. Like they became they have my so they can use all of my pathetic conversations with my therapist. The problem with this is there are no carve outs for HIPAA laws, or, you know, so, Dr. Patient conversations are meant to become totally confidential like, say your, you know, a lawyer and you're talking to your client. That's confidential. There are no opt-outs and there are no carve outs, you know, in the terms of service for sensitive. You can't say, no, they just say we have and it's the Limited lice unlicensed like you, like they basically say we have the rights to all of it and you can't say shit about it. You know, it's interesting that you pointed out. Let's start with the just the knowledge that this is another one of these fake public company. This is run by it. Yeah, that is Eric Yuan, CEO and founder, right? So he is no, there's no ostensible oversight. He controls everything. That's right. We were looking at the board early and we were like, you know, moderately impressed with the amount of like I guess like it's a lot of big tech knowledge what movers and shakers. Yeah. But but what they don't have which is an interesting that you're pointing out HIPAA is anyone that represents the customer Community? Anyone that represents that part of stakeholders, right? Who have which should be, which I mean, now that you mention, it is probably crucial for these tech companies as we move into the future, what they mostly have which, but even this should These are people that should not. This should not have gotten lost on the cybersecurity committee of the board is three people. They have a cybersecurity committee. Aboard, you have a cyber security committee. That's impressive, right? Cindy. Hoots is the chair of the committee. Is she a great name? She is the head of data security or what is she information officer at AstraZeneca? So Pharmaceuticals. So you got to know like what you can share, what you can't at a pharmaceutical company. I would imagine the other two people on the committee include HR McMaster who's ahead of the National Security committee under Trump and Janet Napolitano, who was the head of the president, she's the current head of the president President Biden's intelligent Advisory board or she former head of it home security. She's the former head of the homeland security, these are people who know exactly what it is to like use data. Some of the worst ways possible and they are enabling the terms of service to say you can use, basically illegally use data, you can use anyone's data for any. So right time. You're on a conference call with your corporation and it's over Zoom know that everything you're saying goes into a transcript that they will feed into AI to replicate how bored you are during every single meeting. That's that's the reality. I, I guess it does. Beg the question that when you do, when you are a board member at these companies and what are we calling them now? And enablers. Yeah, the enablers. Yeah, the butt so hard and when you're in enabler board director at a company where 70 six percent of the board of influences control by one person near you want, maybe you do kind of mail it in when it comes to these kind of decisions, right? Like so we Define enablers, a free flow analytics. I should say free flow analytics to find enablers as any board member on the board where someone owns 50% or More of the influence. So like, Jeff Bezos. It's not a dual-class company but Jeff Bezos owns you know 57% of the influencers 60% of the influence. According to freefloat analytics everybody else in that board is basically enabling Jeff Bezos. So the the metric here is do you sit on a board where it's basically one dude who makes all the fucking decisions. You just listen to what that guy has to say, and then you're an enabler, a quarter, our data, his name is Bezos also, according to our data, if you're interested, if you're impressed by the fact that Zoom has board members, you know, McMaster and Napoleon up the politano that you just point it out, they control and aggregate of, 1% of boys. What's yeah, what's going on his company? All right, that's it. Come on. All right, let's do the week. Yes, get out of here PM, the board member. Okay, I'm gonna drop a giant family of this week, okay? You said something, you pulled a quote and Your discussion of Nicholas new CEO. Steve Nicholas new CVS, CEO, Steve gursky. Apparently there was a quote and which his he they're going to ease him into the job. Even as the current CEO departs, there's going to be some easing into the job. And I really like the idea of easing Steve gersky into the transition as CEO. And here's why Steve gursky has been on the board of Nicholas since 2018, his company, which vectorio, brought nickel, a public through a SPAC, it was, he's the CEO of the company that brought them public via SPAC. In fact, as part of bringing the public that was what 2020 is that right 2020? Yeah, what they did. Was they added a They they classified the board further there. Oh, prior it was a two classified, two years ago, the other way around. Yeah. Now they're made it three. They made it more classified and they added supermajority voting. So, basically was really hard to get rid of it. Yes, there was just, was it Nicolas, they just had a shareholder vote. They did approve approved. Another class of shares. I think there's like, in the last few days. Well, gersky himself as the specs, sponsor made himself the third largest shareholder at. Oh Nicolas, when it went public and he almost entirely cashed out when Nikola was trading at the high around 60 dollars a share. In fact, his estimated pay take home, pay was five million just for taking them just on the shares alone. If not more, it's currently trading at $2.18 a share. So when from roughly 60 ish to two dollars, ish, not great, and when he joined the board gersky joined, As the part of the nominating and governance committee. So that would be the committee that a higher CEOs and B overseas stuff like fraud and things like that. Now lest you forgot, Nicholas founder. Trevor Milton has been accused of and found guilty of fraud for rolling a truck down, a hill and saying that it was functional when it wasn't functional. Yeah. So now they've had four CEOs in four years. He's been a part of the committee that nominates all those CEOs and now he's nominated himself. He's basically like this isn't working. I'm just gonna put myself as a CEO, the government's committee. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. No, keep going. The governance committee has had a rotating cast of chairs and members, that included. And this is since 2020. I am checking my watch. It's only 2023 since 2020. They've had three separate chairs of the nominating and governance committee that include. Jeff oven Lynn Forster to Ross, child and gursky himself and the board in the last three years, has not been able to maintain a single female director for more than two years. Every time one joins, they either opt out one year or two years later, they cannot hold on to a woman. And this is the free-float analytics data that we have on gursky's is sponsored by free flow analytics.com, go there. Get a free account. You can read all this Gursky is one of the worst directors on the board. He is batting overall 137 and I'll say he's also the most hated director on the board as of a meeting Cheryl meeting four days ago. He got almost a third of votes withheld against him. The the most hated director on the board. Was like this person. No, not one, not a single person, he will go from 15% influence of the board to around 20 to 30% influence in the board, if he retains the chair position when he becomes CEO. But this is, this is my governance matters. I would go with this is what, what? A governance shit show looks like. As this is why, right? But this is why like, any anti-esg Crusade is clearly full of shit. If you know how you're investors access into this level of data so stupid still, so what we've got now for our BM of the week is a director who named himself CEO, despite being the most hated by Who does shareholders don't like who bats 196 for TSR to 11 for earnings. He has the basically a global worst Point 022 in controversies who's overseen, fraud at the company badly. He was there in 2018 before the fraud. He was part of ousting Trevor Milton after the fraud, and then he can't keep a CEO and he named himself CEO, maybe he's a placeholder for Tesla CFO. Zachary kirkhorn, maybe that's where Zach, they're gonna throw like a, you know, a musk like billion dollar pay package Adam, I don't realize the querque, that's what we got for the BM of the week. That's what we got. We got a lot. That was a lot. You went through the BM of the week. We had a Monday. I mean you have no other no other BM you want. Look, everybody wants to set up their week with a nice solid pm and Steven Universe. You can go right through That's it. That's Damien Raul, I'm your analyst. Soulmate cardi. We are free float. Go to free, float analytics.com. Our sponsor get the data that we use in this show and we talk about all the time. If you don't do that, I don't know what you're doing with your life. I really don't just so much data in there. That's useful, otherwise, come back on Wednesday for woke Wednesday until then. Goodbye.