Transcript
Yah wow. It does kinda work better though these days. Don't jinx anything. Everything's working except for your what your brain. Live Yeah. No, the most most important thing that's working is freeflow analytics dot com. Live from the sweaty band of one of Sam Altman's stupid watches. That's pretty straightforward. Dull. It's an all-new, terrific He was just a burning man too, wasn't he? So it's probably really sweaty. Tuesday edition of Business Pants joined by Analyst Hole Matt Muscarty. And me, your damn host, Damien Rollis. See, I introduced myself. I don't know Yeah, let's do it. Your ch Your G D host. if I want to do that anymore. That felt weird. On today's Double salami with extra accusatory mustard called September first first, twenty twenty-six, the blame game. Yeah who do you blame for everything wrong in your life? The answer is probably someone at Target. I I feel like all of my possibilities are usually the same person. I know. I mean the blame game only has there's only a limited number of people to blame. I think isn't that the point? Like Guess, yeah. we should be holding these people accountable. We know who they are. Our show today is being sponsored by Freeflow Analytics and Freeflowanalytics.com. Officially out of beta mode and It's full launched, baby. It's S out. streaming live, whatever, on the internet, whatever you call it. It's it's out there. Go to freeflowanalytics dot com. You can s just put in your email address. You can sign in. You can see every p possible you can put in a portfolio, it will generate scenario models for you. It it'll do all sorts of th it's nuts. It's nuts. Here's the top story right now. Dyson is entering oral care with a five hundred dollar AI powered toothbrush that flosses for you. Well well we were just complaining in pre production like one minute ago that For me. like Riverside, our our podcast platform, recording platform, it was yelling at us to center our faces and turn on lights. Like w d does everything have to tell nudge us to be like, can I be a human and screw the whole thing up? Let let me leave me alone. Yeah, why it makes me feel like I don't need my arms anymore, Dyson. You ready to blame some people? How many do you have? You have a couple I'll do how many do you have? I'll start let's do it. Yeah, let's blame everybody. I've got I've got like two and a half. I got two and a half. with a big one. I'm going right to target. It's not my fault. It's not my fault, just I'm just looking at news Yeah. Now it is your fault. headlines. I'm not gonna cover this in depth. We did this last week, but now we're gonna blame someone. The the headline is we know we got this wrong. Target apologize ziz and pulls offensive Halloween costume after after racist backlash. I mean, let's not get into it. Everyone, even Target, immediately agreed that this is horribly racist. Of course, against black people. Yeah. Do we but do we even need to get into who to blame? You and I know who to blame. All right, well, I the reason why I picked this one because I noticed on the same day, Target Executive Chair Brian Cornell sells fifty thousand dollar shares for eight million dollars. What a life. What a life. All right, who do you blame? Wow, nice a payday. Yeah. Actually, I have some choices for you. You're gonna like some of them, actually. But I know you'll pick the same one, but who cares? executive chair, former CEO. He was the CEO since two thousand fourteen, still the executive chair, according to Free Flow Analytics. In the new database. he still has the most influence, twenty one percent influence. That's Brian Cornell. Still the most influence Yeah. on the board. I mean, do we need to do you can name other people, but it's gonna stop the buck stops with that guy. CEO Mike Michael Fidelki, sixteen percent influence, started at Target in two thousand three. He was the formerly the COO and CFO. So these two are lifers, right? Yeah. But here's the thing. Fidelki doesn't know how to make a costume. Like he doesn't know what's going on. He's just he's just he's just counting I know, okay. This is why it's a game. the money. He's just counting the money. That's all. the fact is Target stock is up since the controversy. I mean, like nobody cares. Funny, I have I have I have stock price as a possible answer later in the show. you know what I thought this is I'm gonna start a conspiracy theory about Target. I think they're I think Yes. they're on to us, I think they listen to us because I I You think so? there's two bios from Michael Fidelke on the Target webpage, one for his role as CEO and one for his role as director. neither one lists the years of service he's been there. I I think they're hiding the fact that they picked a lifer. to take over a company that needed a a lot of help. I 'cause Yeah. I I don't know why they don't tell it just says he's been there. It's like, thanks, Yeah. great. Like, don't hide the Wait, he is fact that he's been there since since the first Bush administration. I mean you know, it's like W Bush. That's a long time ago. Kidding has does they have two totally separate bios? Two different bios, yeah. Like they don't have the same words in them or anything? They're different. They're different bios. That's really bad. That's r I mean like isn't he one person? How many like how many The third No. bios does a person have? Well, that's why freeflowanalytics.com is so interesting to me, because he's actually two people. He's a director and a CEO. Alright. Yeah. I didn't realize he was two humans. Got it. Some people are like many humans, like this next choice. Dimitri Stockton, he's been on the board for eight years. He is our Boo. he's our double DEI hater. He was at Target and Deer and Company when they're both like yes, Mr. Trump, black people suck. They both agreed. They got rid of their DEI program. He is a black man. Yeah, hey, they can do it too. I liked Yeah. He's a black man, by the way. Right, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just saying. Saying for the record. I like the fact that they said that he provides among other skills. I mean he's got every skill in the world just because he was I guess he was at General Electric, so they say he's good at everything. they say he's good at mar Yeah, everybody there was good at everything. Except making money 'cause they went out of business. he provides skills in marketing designer marketing design and brands. reputation management and sustainability and No governance skills. So I don't know. I don't know about reputation management. I don't know. I don't know about that one. Reputation management. I don't know that he's doing that. I mean literally the two companies he's on the board of he Yeah. helped destroy the reputations of Here's here's Target's definition of reputation management. they say to be successful, we must preserve, grow, and leverage the value of of our reputation with our guests, team members, vendors, and our shareholders and appropriately respond to crisis events events affecting them. I mean, this is a cup this is like one of the only big American companies that's constantly under boycott. If the p if the crisis was the company made their own crisis, does that count in reputation management? Is that supposed to be 'cause maybe he's really good at reputation management after the crisis, but what but Yeah, I doubt it. he just sets up a crisis so that he could be good at the thing he's good at. I don't know. I'm just And then my fourth choice is how about a random executive? You know, I I I I didn't set this up. I actually looked at their leadership and picked the three executives that I thought could be responsible, including that was Chief Merchandising Officer Kara Sylvester, Chief Community and Stakeholder Engagement Officer Kira Fernandez, and then Chief Stores Officer Adrian Costanzo. All three of them, this is when they started at Target. 2007, 2001, 2004. This culture is so stagnant and dusty, right? I mean, I I It's it's I mean, come on. couldn't have made that up. I what I it's so weird how they're this is why Brian Cornell's power is so bad, because a new CEO certainly would have made some changes, right? An extern I'm sorry, an external CEO would have made Well, if they were an outside CEO. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, correct. Changes. I mean, everyone's been there for decades. Look, we know the facts about external CEOs is that they tend to cost more because you have to onboard them, you golden hello them, you you golden shower them, whatever you're doing with the d external Couldn't you fire your executive chair and have an independent chair and save a lot of money that way? But you like if the board was not basically linked to Brian Cornell in every possible way, anyway, they would look at Target the company and say, We have had like the last seven years have been shit. Like like the culture is ingrained. We actually And these headlines need to to shake this up. And these headlines just add to the problem because I I know they're I I know this is like one mess up out of, you know, tens of thousands of products, but this is these are the kind of stories and headlines that people glom onto. No, this is frankly, this is a repeat mess up because the like before they had Pride merch in Target, they actually were castigated for being anti LGBTQ. They were under they were under boycott and under pressure from the LGBTQ plus community for not being very inclusive. And then they went and they put out Pride Merch. And then Kid Rock shoots a Budweiser can and Robbie Starbuck makes a phone call, both of whom are just internet tro I mean, one was a is like a mediocre rocker. Like what what are we listening to that guy for? But no. Then they flip again on DEI. Now everyone hates them for that. And now they yeah, they're putting out quote unquote accidentally racist, you know, Halloween costumes. I this is like an ongoing thing for a decade. This isn't like Yeah. Well because yeah, well Sudden. you said it for decades because everyone I've listed has been there for decades. So who do you blame? Who do you blame? come on, all right. Well I had some good choices though. Decades. I blame Brian Cornell. I know you wanted to make it more interesting than that. But the fact is it's his culture. It was hi he was the CEO overseeing these people. He oversaw It is it is Fidelki. He's still there. I mean Why w what kind of pic who does he have pictures of to stay there? Like what how does he stay there? I don't understand. Look at the tenures of the board on free flow analytics. Everyone on the board has been there less than he has. So literally everyone on that board joined under his tenure. He is the one who helped choose them, right? So what are we really talking about here? There's just one guy. When you look at the connections map of this company, which is already bananas, it's already nuts. Brian Cornell. Is connected to multiple directors through the retail industry leaders association, Home Depot, National Retail Federation, the Business Council, Young Brands. He he's got connections everywhere. Bank of America. He's got connections everywhere. This is a guy who basically has been running the company and running the people for 12 or 14 years. He's he's the guy. So you there's no one else to blame. There's no one else to blame. Alright, fine, you blamed him. Alright. We're I guess we're I guess there this the end of the story is that we're gonna keep blaming him until he leaves. Alright, what's you Until he's gone. I finally you finally tagged a story. Somebody was like, he needs to go. Like I l All right. They're fine finally Why don't you do one? Yeah, that's true. People are catching up to this. What else? What do you got? figuring it out. All right. I have a it's a this is a two parter blamer, but w one is short and one is long. Yeah. here's A two parter blamer said nobody ever. Go ahead. here's the headline. Altria announces election of Steve Presley to Altria's board of directors. Ultra is the that's camel smokes smokes. Why are they allowed to call themselves Ultra? Philip Morris, yeah. They there smokes tobacco. They should call themselves like the cigarette company. Or like Yeah, something like that. Should Okay. They sh yeah, d death merchants, but they that's that that was taken, I think. That's why they didn't they didn't go with that. so part one of who do you blame is so the the headline says announces election of Steve Presley. Here is the eight K. Here's the announcement, Mm-hmm. okay? This is the most woeful, information free eight K I've ever read about a person. Wow, you really you're diving into this one. Okay, go ahead. and this is like the this is for those of you who wanna get wonky, this is item five dot two, that the appointment of certain officers com or comp compensatory arrangements of certain officers, yada yada yada. All right, this Yeah, these are the press releases they're forced to file until I mean for now. I right? I I mean yeah, I mean I I'm assuming if a Republican With the SEC. Yeah. For now. Until Paul Atkins like, we don't need to know anybody who works there. wins the next presidential election, just say goodbye to the SEC, I I suppose. Yeah. Yeah, what do we need what was it doing anyway? all right. They s on August twenty seventh, the board of directors of Altria Group increased the size of the board from ten to eleven directors and elected Stephen W. Presley to the board. Effective August twenty seventh. The board also elected Mr. Presley to the board's compensation and talent development, innovation, and finance committees. Let multiple committees there. The board affirmatively determined that Mr. Presley qualifies as an independent director under New York Stock Exchange listing standards. Mr. Presley will be compensated for his service. That is all. There is nothing about who he is. Hmm. How do you make an announcement in a filing about a guy you added to the board without mentioning a single thing about the guy? All they said was that he's independent Well they don't care. They don't care what you think. Yeah. They don't care what you think. according to the New York Stock Exchange and he's gonna get paid for his board position? Yeah. So who do you blame for this woeful disclosure? Do you blame general counsel Bob McArthur at Altria? Who Bob Is that his yeah, go ahead. Bob went from representing Philip Morris externally. He was part of a law group that was, you know, you know, defending Philip Morris against, you know, l class action lawsuits and lawsuits, including one where I actually read he argued that a woman's smoking caused stenosis was caused by bad genetics, not the smoking. Whoa. Yeah, that's dark. so general counsel Bob McArthur. Why him? because you know, like the general counsel, don't they do all the like legally stuff? This is I don't actually know. I thought it was like the the s the the corporate secretary. I don't actually investor relations? I don't actually know. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Right. This is what I'm gonna this is what I'm guessing. They they didn't list IR. So the person in IR is not important enough. It must have gone up through somebody else, right? Well, if you're if you're a death merchant company, what's it what they called? Ul Altria? Do you really yeah. Altria, yeah. want to have an investor relations title person at all? Do you want people talking to you and calling you? I mean Yes. no you well you want lack of investor relations. how about Chief Compliance Officer, who also is Chief Human Resources Officer, Charlie Charlie Whitaker. I've never seen both I've never seen both. I've never seen both. either. also a lawyer. He's a you like a labor lawyer. So what does that mean? Does that mean that does that mean that they devalue compliance or are they devaluing human resources? Or both? Okay, so th that that's a throwaway I'm I'm gonna go with ch human resources, right? Like, isn't that the thing? there. I mean, he's a labor lawyer, so maybe he maybe it is the compliance that they're they're over. Or do you All right. yeah, I don't think they care. Yeah, go ahead. blame CEO Sal Mancuso, who was at he's been at Ultra Philip Morris for a long time. He was in the a audit and tax department. The firm is actually literally run by lawyers, accountants, and marketing. There's nobody there who's like a like a a person. Who, you know, like is like cultivating tobacco leaves and making them safer in the executive management team. It's like just lawyers and and accountants, basically. so who do you blame? for the woeful disclosure, first and foremost. Cause this is part one, remember? Is general counsel, chief part one. Part one. compliance officer or CEO? I guess I'm gonna go with I I don't I hate dual roles like at like this high level of s now we're seeing like a lot of COO slash C F O. Like what the hell is that? I mean Yeah, I know. That's just a way to get a one man two roles at once. Yeah. Yeah, but that's weird. I I don't I've never seen a a c the combination of human resources and compliance and it frankly I find it startling. I 'cause I that means something is not being paid attention to, and those are two extremely important things that no one ever talks about. I'm gonna blame Well, Charlie Whitaker then. yeah, wouldn't it be way easier if you just didn't gave no information on the th on the filings that you had to file? That's that makes it easier. All right, so part two of who do you blame is the choice of Presley himself. Because we know nothing about Presley according to the filing, so I had to actually go read a bunch of stuff about him. Do we blame the nom committee? Ian Clark, Marjorie Connolly, Matt Davis, Rich Stoddard, Ellen Stahl Stallman. or the chair Deborah Kelly Ennis. the the it they expanded the board and added Presley, who's a white male, despite having no black people on the board of Altria Group. They couldn't find one black person who smokes or Well that makes sense for for I mean, do we need to talk about the history of tobacco in this country? Do we really need to go down the history of No, we don't probably don't need to. No. We we don't we really don't want to. but the the the two of the five women on the board have over twelve years of tenure and only four of the d eleven directors got tagged as having merit. So and you So I'm blaming the nomination committee, yeah. could blame obviously they put most of the women on the nomination committee. do you blame the number of committees? Now there are six different committees at Altria Group. Ooh, I like this. And every committee, there's eleven members of the board. They just expanded it to eleven. They had ten. They had ten members of the board and six they had more like committees than they had enough people to stock the committees. they had six directors per committee, except for on the audit committee. So Damn. Which is which is not the point of the the committees are supposed to be a subset of the board that make decisions, right? I like this choice, yeah. Wha Wha what are we what are we doing? There's like so so so they they needed to add somebody they ne anyone. They were like, I d Steve, could you just show me the board? There's so many fucking committees. We don't well I like I I I don't have time. Maybe they needed a a shortstop for their softball team. Did you ever think of that? I that's possible. I didn't put that as one of the options. They're they're failing softball team. Or do you blame Rich Stoddart, who's on Mm. the nomination committee, also on the audit committee, the innovation committee, and the social responsibility committee? Interesting. I honestly are is innovation and social responsibility two separate committees? Because would shouldn't that be one committee? 'Cause anything Two, two. Yeah, it's two different. Yeah. No. they innovate there, they might want to think like, are we who are we killing with this? Like, right? that I just like the fact that he's on like four committees. Like Yeah. All right. he was the CEO of Leo Burnett, an advertising agency that handled a massive portion of Nestle USA's advertising, and s s Presley himself, the guy they added to the board, was the CEO of Nestle USA. So there's your connection to this actual board. damn Ugh I was so ready to do the number of committees 'cause clearly this board is just a b bunch of people crossing in the hallways and bumping into each other and they don't know where they're going and damn it. Yeah, it's it's rich it's rich starter. That's who I'm blaming. Can't it be both? I mean, can't Rich Stoddard, who's on four committees, be like, I'm on too many committees and I know this guy, Steve? Yeah, it's rich. It's rich. It's rich. All right. That was my that was my twofer. I wonder why they listened to him though. What about Rich How I'm gonna check Freeflow Intellect h Rich has been on the board for only one year. Why are they bringing why are they listening to him? Well, I'm sure Rich was like, Guys, I've been on a bunch of boards. I know a dude. Like, I know a dude. Can we just really make there's so many committees there's so like, can we just This is actually make this easier? I I I gotta hand it to Ultra. This is actually a very low tenured board. I mean these there there haven't been it's a good balance of tenures on this board. I'll hand it to them. Yeah, all right. Hand them something. All right. Here's the headline. Black CFO representation falls twenty-five percent from twenty twenty one peak as div diversity levels off. Now, look, I the numbers are so low anyway that i you know the the math here is a bit misleading, but the number of black CFOs in the S P five hundred are down to fifteen this year. but but again, the the the mo the trend here is just in general, black. People, women, they're just losing they they were rising and now they're declining. Well, like if we're honest, what they what was happening, the trend was they were increasingly getting representation and they were just They were entering the pipeline. just starting to fight for inclusion, right? Like one of the free flow analytics data points is the power gap where you have representation on the board but not influence or power on the board, right? But you're there. Like finally you're in the door. You gotta be in the pipeline though. I mean you to to like gain a crew experience, right? A crew buddies. But I think it wa it's no it's no coincidence that as soon as we the data showed the inclusion gap starting to close, starting to get whittled down, you saw the backlash to representation at all. That's when they closed the door and said, Get the fuck out because now you're eating po it's one thing for you to sit here and do what I say. It's another thing for you to sit here and have an opinion that I have to listen to, right? Like That that was it. So I'm not shocked that we're seeing the So representation go down now. Who do you blame? And I have a first I'm gonna start with a list of companies I c I kinda could quickly cobble together that have have publicly eliminated their DEI programs or have just decided to scale back any contribution to anything that's not just like a white person. like for instance, at Target, one of the things they did is they scaled back its racial equity action and change roadmap. So it like you know, it's not just getting rid of the DEI, the goals and the numbers. It's also c you know, getting rid of actual financial giving to support different programs across the the country. So so here's just a quick list of the companies. I'm not gonna tell you everything they got rid of. It would take too long. Tractor supply, Deering Company, Target, Walmart, Lowe's, Ford Motor Company. I love that it would take too long to list all the companies that did shitty things to DEI. I know. Harley Davidson, Molson Coors, Meta, Amazon, McDonald's, Goldman Sachs, which is interesting about some of these is that like it's really one person. Like Ford is the Ford family, Meta is Zuck, Amazon's Bezos. I mean, they're the ones who pulled the trigger on this. So who do you blame? you could pick one of those companies. you also could pick a list I created of the double dippers. Okay, here are the double dippers Dimitri Stockton. We already talked about him. Yeah, you talked about him already. Director at both Target and Deer. John May, he's the CEO and chair at Deer and a director at Ford. So he's a double dipper. Marvin Ellison, Yeah. Good for you. CEO and chair at Lowe's, after working 15 years at Target. So he came right from that Target culture. And then finally, a bit of a triple dipper, maybe. Jim Farley, he is the CEO of Ford. And he's currently a McDonald's director, and he just stepped down as director this year at Harley's Davidson. So a a a bit of a triple dipper. So Wow. Jim. Yeah. and then finally I just tagged on because this is the culture they created. I I just tr I tagged on Trump two point and Elon because this is really their baby. Go ahead. Who do you blame? I don't look, I think it's I think it's li it's a bit lazy to blame Trump and Elon for this. And I think that I think that because the companies don't twist themselves and pretzels to like political pretzels if they care about the thing in the first place. Costco is the proof of that. Costco's making money hand over fist. Their director came out and said, Shut the fuck up about DEI. We're we're a hundred percent behind it, so get out with that. Costco won a ton of business for doing that, and no one has targeted them. Like it now we're not talking with nobody's talking about like Costco is too woke to go shop. Like they didn't get boycott. The what you've listed is companies That never probably cared deeply about DEI in the first place. They weren't doing it for real. They didn't see the value in it. They were doing it post-George Floyd. It was reactionary and now they're reactionary again. I mean you say that but that companies like Target, Meta, Amazon, McDonald's, like how that they don't care? I i I mean, they're literally selling I mean to the world and they don't care about every demographic? That's kinda nuts. Well, if you're if you're like Meta, you only care about one guy says. If Yeah. you're Ford, you only care about what the Ford family thinks. There's like I But why yeah, I don't yeah. Okay. Walmart's the same way. You notice how many like controlled companies are on this list? Amazon. Yeah, I forgot about Walmart, yeah. Yeah, that's true. like this is like mostly people who are run by a dude or like a white guy. That's it. I I'm gonna actually blame Jim Farley. okay, the t the triple dipper. Yeah. He's the he should be the poster child for this. Yeah. I'm just gonna pick him in the tri the triple dipper. Yeah. I I mean, how many places can you be petrified? How many places can you be petrified, you big fat baby? Just get over it. It's sad. This one's sad too because these are three iconic American brands. I mean Ford, McDonald's, Harley Davidson. I mean, th these are the things that really do represent America, if you think from a brand perspective. So it it's a it's just sad. I don't know. It's it's sad that those brands have to be the ones that turn their back on people of color and women. I don't know. All right, let's move on. Let me Yeah, the the American brands, yeah. I'm not sh somehow I'm not shocked. All right, here's Le wait, wait, let me do one 'cause you have a longer one, right? Let me I'm gonna s I'm gonna s Well, I guess yeah. I'm gonna do one more quick nerdy governance one. Ooh, okay. so my first one was CF black CFO reputation. Second one is this headline shareholder opposition to executive pay eases globally. which I'm sure you're not surprised about. But but What? but the data is in Europe it fell nearly six percentage points, so the six percent le wait, the okay, so the no votes fell six percentage points, and in America they fell about one percent. But it's but in America was already the no's were only like ninety percent and now they've kind of ticked up to close to ninety one percent. The point is overall, from a global perspective, despite the rise in CEO pay and the disgruntlement of of stakeholders everywhere, the investors who actually vote don't they they care even less year over year. You got it? Who do you blame? I have to blame somebody for this? How am I I just want I want you to blame someone. I got five choices. Proxy advisory firms, ISS and Glass Lewis, so they're issuing fewer no vote recommendations, even less than before. I don't know how that's possible. Because don't they have I thought they had policies in place. No, well they got rid of their like standard policies or something. Like I So they don't have any policies. So despite the fact that that pay goes up, how? How could their vote recommend shouldn't be going the other way? okay, you're saying they got rid of the policies. All right. b how about Vanguard, Vanguard, Black Rock, and State I know. Vanguard, Vanguard. BlackRock, and State Street. they too are backing say on pay at higher rates. And they remember they're also doing this like weird thing where they're They're pretending to like pass off the vote to the right. So do you blame them? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Pass through voting, yeah. How about do you blame compensation committees? because somehow they are they continue to to to to tweak pay structures that give CEOs even more money. And somehow they are they're having meetings with their investors and and somehow the investors leave saying, Okay, they did a they're they're doing a better job, even, right? I don't yeah. I don't know how the compensation committees are getting away with this. That's the third choice. Fourth choice, just the the whole anti-woke political pressure that comes from the Elon and Trump 2.0 world. I mean, we're you know, we're it's anti-American to to vote against pay. I don't know. And the fifth one, how about just total shareholder return? And we're talking about this before. Greed is good, right? So if the stocks are up, why should we care about anything, right? Why do we We we should only be looking at share price when we evaluate companies. The rest of it is dog shit, right? So that's I those are your five choices. So I so let's I wanna start with compensation committees, which that would be like blaming the the bratty child for being a brat rather than the parents, right? Like Except aren't don't you imagine there are 'cause the the proxy statement says every year that they spend a lot of time talking to their shareholders about these pay plans. So if every year the investors are leaving happier and happier, isn't there something going on where the No, okay. I don't I think that I think the compensation committees are like like look, the the investors don't vote against the compensation committee members. They don't vote them out when they don't like the pay. So Well that's it Yeah, they don't they don't do that at all. imagine like trying to discipline your bratty child by saying, If you do this again, I'm gonna take the your toy away and you never literally never take the toy away. That's what they are. They they they they just push the boundary of everything. And when they go to the compensation like compensation committee goes to their investors, they're not saying like we're planning on increasing pay. They're they say we're planning up we're working with these three, you know, external consultants and we've greater we've got greater alignment between pay and performance, right? Like they Investors like, cool. and the investors don't have time to like think through all of the nuances of a pay contract for, you know, every single company. So they're just like, all right, that sounds good. Move on. Alright, so who else? Who else in this list? The only one on this list that the I think the proxy advisory firms and Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street are correlated, right? Like as in proxy advisory firms stop caring and Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street. For the vast majority of companies, they don't have time to look at. They just defer at least in large part to the proxy advisory firms anyway. So you see one stop, the others stop, right? That but that's their fucking job. Your job Is to look at everything on the proxy, use all the data, and give a recommendation or or at least provide data so that somebody else could could do something. Free flow analytics gives all the data, including they have a measure in there for which directors have done atypical pay packages or overpaying packages relative to other directors every single year. Is it the the one called pay ratio? The pay ratio one is a batting average that shows which ones continually are paying in the like their o relative to median worker pay, which directors keep overpaying their CEOs. So so the a higher so what does the percentage mean? Like I'm looking at I'm looking So the b at Altria and I'm just as an example, Marjorie Mary Conley has a four two average for pay ratio. What does that mean? that means l like she actually slightly overpays relative so the lower that number is, the lower the batting average is, the more you're just paying your CEO relative to the median worker. Well, 'cause a lot of them on this board are actually quite high. Like like Ellen Strahl Strawman is hitting is hitting nine ten in that category. Okay. That's that's unbelievable. That's somebody you would put on if they've been on multiple boards, put them on every comp committee because they're they tend to actually pay. No, I'm saying they tend to actually Are you being sarcastic? Yeah. pay like the the relative to the median worker's salary, they pay pretty well. High is good. High is always good on the batting average. You always want high so so high number is good here. High number's good here. All right. Okay. batting averages. So like, but there's multiple measures at this point. Like you don't that's their fucking job. The proxy advisory firms, that's what you do. And Yeah. And you're you're saying past pay more often? It is it is sad that like that over the last twenty years the proxy advisory group has become a rubber stamp factory. Like they they've kind of like they they they have let go of their responsibility to analyze stuff, right? Each The I would think that every year the the their policies would get even more detailed how they're analy but they go the opposite way. There's no data. They don't do things They don't look at companies individually, they don't look at things to scale, they don't do anything. There's there's like there's no But they're there's no mat method to the madness. The like so this is the f the free float has this problem. This is a little inside baseball for anybody who's actually listening to this show. So hi, Joe, like and Hm is is that possible? Jane, the two people listening. the the the fact is if you are ISS in Glass Lewis and you want to make money, shareholders don't want more stringent plans. They just want it to be easy, they don't want to piss off boards, they want access to information. So when ISS goes out to sell, if they say, we have the most stringent shareholder, you know, protective board or or recommendations that we could possibly have, shareholders say, I don't fucking want that. I just want to make money and not piss anyone off. I don't want like to vote out directors and vote against pay, have everyone calling me up and and being angry at me. And so ISS says, yes, we can accommodate that and we'll sell you stuff anyway. In order to be a money-making venture, which Free Float has barely accomplished, like the you have to basically just kiss the ring, which is now what the data does. And it free float will go down in in flaming principles because the data suggests these half these people fucking suck. They're not good. They pay overpay. They're they don't give you performance. They're not that good at their jobs. So Yeah. Somebody somebody has to go down flaming principles. Alright, who do you blame? I'm going with the proxy advisors. That's o that's it. That's the yeah. No, that's it. They're they're you are? I thought you were going somewhere else with this. the only ones. It's their job. Do your job. Okay. Give all right, g give me one more and then I'll I'll end I'll end with another one. Yep. Alright, I'll I'll make this one quick. here's the headline Callaway Golf CEO met with backlash over apology for good I good video depicting abuse. I was gonna do this one and I just got depressed by the whole thing. So okay, what do you got? Just so if you haven't seen it, 'cause you don't play golf and you don't care, there's In a nutshell. in a nutshell, there's an ad that got put out by a Callaway golf made by Good Good, where they partnered, Whatever that is, it's like a YouTube thing. in which a good good YouTube personality, Garrett Clark, charges at Alexis Maystowski, who I guess is a golfer, knocks her over, pushes her, like physically throws her to the ground, Yeah. stands over and says, Do not touch my new driver. In a nutshell, the Right, as she's reaching for the driver. That's it. ad that good good approved and Callaway Golf approved was of a a man pushing down a woman because of a golf thing. Right? In a nutshell? And you're frozen. And you're back. I know. All right, so what do you So you said everything was working and then it and then it died. That's that's what happens. got? So company Callaway issued a statement on Friday, which we covered and you made fun of because Calloway managed to apologize without ever mentioning a human being in the apology, right? Like nobody apologized. It was like a company statement. But CEO Chip Brewer, Chippy, Chip brewer, yeah. Chip, did a social media post this morning stating is that right? Another one. yeah, another one, stating, quote, That approval, the approval for the ad, that approval should have should never have happened. Mistakes were made, and we are taking the matter very seriously. I want to make it clear that we sincerely apologize for the video. He did not mention women at any point in his apology, but he did say like they apologize. So who do you blame? Who do you blame for the ad and the follow up? Is one of the people Oliver Brewer the Third? That is chip. That's chip. Yeah, okay, okay. do you blame? I'm not even I didn't even put Chip Brewer on the the blame. No, I didn't put him on. You didn't. Interesting. All right, go ahead. Keep going. Give me a list. president of Callaway Golf, Glenn Hickey, who leads sales and marketing for Callaway. His prior work, prior to actually joining Callaway Golf, was he was a bond trader and he got a business degree from San Diego State. I think he was absent on the class where they said, Don't do an ad where you shove a woman to the ground. I don't think he was in that lesson. But Mm-hmm. So he was a president he's a president of Cal Wiglob. Okay. Isn't he the guy who's supposed who who s says this is okay? Like I doubt well to see because he he oversees the marketing. All marketing for Callaway USA. That's his that's his purview. Yeah. Sales and marketing, that's Why? I don't understand. Why are you picking him though? Why the Okay, I didn't know that. Alright. you told me that. Yeah, he leads sales and marketing. Yeah. Okay. Well, his thing. ultimately, yeah, of course. So he he I I guarantee that that when there is success at Callaway in sales, he is getting the most the biggest bonus at the end of the year, right? There's no doubt. Okay, so yeah. So okay, keep going, yeah. yeah. He's high fiving. Yeah. He's loving it. Yeah. Yeah. Do you blame g Goodgood, which is like the partner who who built the ad and its CEO, Matt Kendrick? I love this guy because he he's now saying, it's all Callaway Golf's fault because they approved it. He's not taking any yeah, he's not he's like, So well he first said he did, he apologized. He apologi He apologized. he apologized saying like this shouldn't have never happened, yada yada yada. But then he was so pissed at Callaway, he posted this on X. Apparently it's his second post since or first post since 2015 on on Twitter. He wrote, Interesting that Callaway Golf asks us to make an ad, then approves it, then asks us to take the fall, then drops us in a coordinated media blitz. And covers it up by giving a million dollars away thinking everyone will be okay with it. Thirty for thirty, I think he means thirty for thirty. He wrote thirty for thirty nine. Thirty for thirty will be legendary. You know like ESPN's thirty for thirty, those documentaries? Like he Yeah, he's he's like if they made a not great. What what? Wait, wha what is that? Is what's that code? wait, so he's saying that they're gonna make a documentary about I gotta tell ya, Matt Kendrick, this is like the wrong way to go about this. Like I I appre I appreciate this is exactly what we talked about at for past apologies like a like an Anheuser Busch and blah blah blah blah blah. But y d but going at it with sarcasm and and like predicting a a documentary and you just sound Weird. You just sound like you don't care. Which and you know what, Matt Kendrick? I know you don't care. Yeah, because because D you don't care. Yeah, yeah, you don't care. That's correct. no ad agency is gonna make that dumb ad, even if even even if you're being told to you're gonna be like, I don't know, this this is not really what we do. I we don't like we don't do the domestic violence thing. Like that's not our shtick, you know what I mean? I mean so shut up, Matt Kendrick. All wh what else? That's a that's a shtick. so you could blame the women on the board of the management team at Callaway Golf. Should they should have The women. Ooh, I like this. I see I like this. Yeah, I always forget that caught this before it got out, right? I I forget that Callaway Golf is a publicly traded company in our database because it's like how is a golf how is golf a real thing? That's what I keep thinking. But it is. It is a it is a real thing. I did see Kevin O'Leary just said, if we're pissed about data centers using water, why aren't we shutting down every golf course? And I was like, I would love to shut down every golf course, please. Which we are. please. I mean it that wa yeah, I mean that was the that was like the OG thing that everyone used to hate, right? And then it like everyone used to be upset at at how the land use, the the the the the resources, the waste, just all of it. The exclusivity, yeah. K, tell Yes, absolutely. me about the women on the board of Callaway Golf. All right, so the women on the board of Callaway Golf and the management team are there's two women on the board. One who is an auditor and ex Boeing. So obviously they don't have any problems that are she worked at Boeing. She worked at Boeing. Ex Boeing like she she worked there or she's on the board? Okay, okay. The other is a chief people officer of a food company. That's those are the two women on the board. And the one woman in management is the chief people officer. So The chief people officer. Well, you I give Callaway credit, I guess, because that you represent ostensibly you're representing Labour and the people by having a board member with the expertise. So I do agree with that choice. So th those d th those But why are we blaming them exactly? w there's no way they saw the ad. We're not blaming them at all. Like there's no way on earth they saw this ad. they have nothing to do with it. I know, it's this doesn't fit. Or do we blame Okay, all right. All right. Yeah. As much as we like to blame directors, that does seem far fetched. 'Cause it's not like at Target where the board is complicit because they're just okaying the the the ongoing reign of Brian Cornell. Like nobody can do anything about it. Like, you know, he just stays forever, right? So anyway, okay. And who else? Well, here's the here's the kicker. You you wondered why I didn't pick the CEO, Chip Brewer the Third, and his monocle. Oliver Brewer the Third. O Oliver Brewer the Third. Chi Chip is his like relatable name because I I noticed that when they refer to Chip Brewer, they actually they drop the third. I'm I'm dead serious. He's just Chip Brewer, but He's chip brewer, yeah. then when you go the next level you realize he's actually Oliver Brewer the third. So he's hiding that pretty well. I love it. I love it. Yep. Yeah. It's good job, Oliver. but I didn't blame him because, according to Free Flow Analytics, he is not even close to the highest influence person on the board. That is a person named Yeah. I know who you're gonna pick. Tom Dundan. Yep. He has according to Freeflow Analytics has fifty six percent influence on this board. He j he just became like a significant shareholder. Is that what it is? Because he he merg he owns ten or just over ten percent of the stock and he merged Yeah. Callaway and Top Golf together a few years ago. He's the guy who actually makes the calls. In fact, in the proxy, this is my favorite proxy Yeah. I've ever like a disclosure I've ever seen. In the twenty twenty six proxy for Callaway Golf, it says Tom Dundan's on the board. He has been a director since not applicable. That's what it says. Not applicable. Huh, really? I Like like don't even know what that means. It time doesn't apply to Tom Dundan. He Yeah. he's he's outside the bounds of time. And and just to be clear for that one listener, it it's highly unusual that a director on a US board has ten percent of board of shares. That that's Yeah. v it's that's a lot. That's a lot of power. Yeah, that's why that's the probably the most significant reason why his influence is so high. Because yeah, he's a key shareholder and he's a key director. Well So those are your options. You know, you're saying it this is an interesting one 'cause you but you just told me that we can't blame the directors 'cause they wouldn't have seen the ad. Now are you suggesting that Tom Dundan oversees day to day that they see he sees the ad? I'm suggesting that even if he didn't see the ad, he's responsible because he's the top dog everywhere. What what angers me is that he is and this is why I I I still, believe it or not, I don't know w I don't know why, think that that that preflowanalytics.com is important and the data is important because what what pisses me off is the Tom Dundans of the world get the duck out of the spotlight on this, right? Because That's what I yeah. Nobody knows who that guy is. we we I can guarantee we're the only research company and media company that is talking about Tom Dundan in relationship to what's going on at Callaway Golf. He j he hasn't he hasn't made his presence known, right? I mean, forget Oliver Brewer the third. I'd I'd like to hear from him. I'm sick of hearing from Chip Brewer. I'd like to hear from Oliver Brewer the Third. But but I I like what you're doing here and I agree. It's I'm blaming Tom Dundan. Step up, Tom. Step up. Yeah. one more and we'll get out of here. Wow, nice, nice. Step up, do it, get it done. All right, let's let's get out of this show, yeah. I thought you were gonna say the shit show. I f Yeah. didn't like that. I got a a a quick and easy one for you. the headline is Business Has Lost the Trust of a Generation. This is out of Fortune magazine. Just seventeen percent of Americans told Gallup in twenty twenty six they have real confidence in big business. And among adults under thirty five, nearly half now view socialism favorably. Who do you blame? I I picked six easy targets. Do you blame. And okay, the first three come from the article itself, which I thought were interesting thoughts, and then the last three, of course, are me. the do you blame the lies? Blaming like as an example, blaming layoffs on AI, like the lies that ever right that are being called out. Yeah, they lied. They're gonna actually happen, the AI layoffs. They just blamed it on AI They blame L before it actually was AI. Yeah. And I again this is why this type of data and this kind and media journalism is still so important, right? 'Cause I mean, people need to know that that that the CEOs they're lying about why people are being layoffs. The broken promises. Do you blame the broken promises? And they're specifically talking about the r return to office mandates, right? I mean you they just suddenly switch gears and they're like, never mind, come back. we don't care w I'll come back to the office. The third one was the populist math, the CEO pay ratios. I mean the the the this is something that we were in long ago that no one else was in. Yes. Ooh. Did they mention that in the article? CEO pay ratios? Yes, they did. They and and Wow. the world has caught up to our voice on this because we used to we used to harp on this regularly, and now the world actually looks at the CEO pay ratio and and it it has a significance to them. They the headlines have copied us, they they include like you know, when h how long it takes the CEO to earn this money. Like it's a it's a highly relatable data point and there aren't many in the proxy statement. You know, I mean we try here we That's that's an understatement. try here weekly to make all this relatable. It's difficult. So they they cited that one. The other ones I picked were just the the four headed horseman, the the Mount Rushmore of like sort of evil CEO that has developed. The Elon Bezos Zuck Altman They and they have they've ruined their own reputations, right? Like it it's not our yeah, they've done themselves the d yeah. opinion. It they just they they're they're they're overly rich and they they and they everyone knows they suck at this point. Or what about Jamie Diamond, I thought? Because he is the master blowhard. He's always say he's always saying things. He's always telling people how to be, how to live. And I thought Maybe it's not like the Elons of the world. Maybe it's like the blowhards of the world that are constantly telling the little people what's up, like what's right, what's gonna happen, what you should do. And my my six Hmm. That is the Elon. and my sixth choice is someone that no one ever talks about, but that w well I should say that regular people don't talk about, but that the right wing w went after recently and that we used to go after. Well well, Lar Larry Fink. BlackRock right, the primary owner. of of of everything, right? He th Everything. Yeah. he's the they're the number one owner of every US corporation. So there's my list for you. Who do you blame? Why are why don't Americans trust corporations anymore? What what do you think? I'm gonna go with the the lies. All right. It's the f it's the first one. It's just The li okay. All right. Lies. it's just constantly being gaslit. Like like Yeah. Or or to your point, putting direct I know people don't look at these press releases like we do, but you put a director on a board and you don't even tell who he is. Or you how about you fire a CEO for conduct and you don't tell us why? That's part of lies. That's part of the lies. Yeah. And you don't say why. That's part of it. It's all the things they keep from you. It's all the things that you suspect are there, but you don't actually have evidence for where you feel like there's like a conspiracy against you. It's Lies, gaslighting, yes. all the gaslighting. It's the intertwining of politics and money that's all dark now because of Citizens United. All of that stuff, when you take it like How about starting starting AI companies and then warning us that it's gonna ruin the world and like like making it our burden to fix And then ch Trump just came out and said if you don't want a data center, you're backwards. Like you know, like you're a backwards moron. Yeah. Well, it's funny you related I guess i it wasn't you, but you you just made the relation the the c connection between data centers and golf clubs. Because isn't golf isn't Trump Mr. Golf? He owns so many golf qu yeah. Yeah. The lies. All right, that's that's all I got. All right. Yeah, yeah. He's like a golf yeah, it's a club. He does they d I d he's the biggest water user. yeah, it's all about lies. That's it. that was that was the blame game. That I think we Enough. Yeah, that was enough. that was enough. Yeah, that's a lot. This is always a long game. I'm So everything's a lot. exhausted by the end of it. That's all we got. That's Hazelnut Rollis. I'm your analyst toll, Matt Muscardy. We are free float. Like I said, free float analytics dot com live. Active, go. Just It's cool. Yeah. just go check it out. Do me a favor because it takes you like 30 seconds D yeah, do Matt a favor. to do to to like put your email in and walk around the site. Just give it a look. Look up your favorite company or least favorite company and see if there's anything interesting. And guess what? If you want to see something on there, you can always reach out. We are constantly building now. It's it's I've decided we're in permanent beta mode. Give us Ooh. a call, send us an email, go to the website, freeflowanalytics.com. goodbye.