Transcript
This is proxy countdown. Welcome to the Big Show for the week of January. 22nd 2024 alongside my tag team partner. Matt mascardi. I'm Damien rolas on today's countdown, a Semiconductor Company, finds the courage to invite its second woman into the boardroom. A hard-headed wrestler, Phil's a folding metal board chair at a fighting company. A coalition of labor unions, tries to fill a symbolically empty board chair at Starbucks. Vote results at Visa in Costco. And finally, in the big boat, mats recommendation on the world's most beloved brand. Stay tuned to find out what that brand is. Oh, wow, teaser, Get right to our tradewater and our tarp stories. First and foremost TKA group. has appointed two members to its board a dude named Bradley kewell that nobody cares about and a dude named the rock that everybody not named Bradley kewell cares about the rock also signed a Services agreement worth 30 million dollars in equity, new director there at TKO group, The Rock Dwayne Johnson I love celebrity directors we have a number of them a grant hill Shaquille O'Neal athletes celebrities Director turnover at Las Vegas Sands where Nora Jordan and David Levy and their combined 9% influence, or stepping down, while Alan Lee. President of the French Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Hong, Kong is joining the board. Lee is on a bit of a sin company board role as he joined the board of French booze company. Remy, Cointreau in July. McCormick & Company, welcomes its third black male director to the board. In Terry Thomas, Chief growth officer of flour foods for Corporate America. This is saying something three black male director's microchip. Technology is appointing only its second, female director, Ellen, Barker, the former Chief Information officer of Texas Instruments again, quite odd to see, only one woman on the board at such a big company. And lastly, A possible hint at the successor to CEO. Brian, Cornell at Target, CFO. Michael fiddelke is now the company's CEO after having served to see a voice in 2019. That's a fresh off our trade Wireless. Let's go to our proxy cage matches a quick update on the proxy cage match at Disney. Where Blackwells has been begging shareholders to take its nominated director. Seriously, and we're trying has announced that it wants Disney to be as good as Netflix. Try and also worth pointing out trying. This is how the filing process for these proxy cage matches work there. The the activists are constantly filing with the SEC as an example, try and dedicated an entire SEC file in with a single tweet, from Jim Cramer over their scene, ABC, mad money. And the quote is, I think, the stock of Disney is now going up in large part because of the heat. Pelts is generating. That was the entire filing with the SEC. A tweet from Jim Cramer. At Starbuck's. The Strategic organizing Center, has finally announced the three directors. It is targeting and it's attempt to convince shareholders to elect three labor, friendly nominees to the board and they are Compensation committee chair and flat white drinking. Ritch Allison. Audit committee chair. And brown sugar oat milk. Latte fan, Andy, Campion and nominating. Committee chair and caramel macchiato sipping Jorgen veg store so SOC is targeting. All three of the chairs of the Committees over their Starbucks for its three directors, that we mentioned before, labor lawyer Wilma Lehman, seasoned corporate director and pensions expert. Joshua Gautam and former senior White House, official mariachi Look I'm calling this one. Now it's going to be a split vote mostly because nude store already got. We do an adjusted vote that adjusts out BlackRock Vanguard and State Street who typically vote with management and Newt store have already got an adjusted four vote of 84%. The worst on the board last year. So this is a rare vote against the Nam chair for anything. Other than diversity issues. Typically you see ISS has a policy that says vote against the Nom chair of the board's. Not diverse. That's not the case. Here, the board is very diverse. So either investors don't like laxman becoming the CEO, or they don't like the other board members, or they just don't like nude store, but either way, it could be a win for SOC, but SOC missed a trick. The worst performing director on the board is actually Beth forged. She's on both the comp and audit committees. She bets 385 for earnings and 387 for TSR both below. Average and outside of Hobson is the most connected director on the board. Instead of choosing three white dudes and looking like your woke Target nude store can't be on and Beth Ford. Keep Ritch Allison in there. Who bats? A fantastic 731 earnings and overall is a pretty average director and I would have gone for the other three. But I'm, I'm expecting a split vote here. I will say that. These three directors represent, the least amount of influence, 3%, 6% and 6% respectively. So it might be an inspired Choice by the soc. As they are merely there to rubber stamp decisions from the boards powerful. Duopoly and CEO laxman near siemen and chair, mellody Hobson. So maybe that's part of maybe they have access to free flow data and their targeting the three lease powerful directors, at Starbucks. It's smart of us OC use our data and lastly, in a different kind of proxy cage match, where the wealthy Corporation tries to sidestep shareholders entirely, ExxonMobil is trying to avoid a proxy battle by suing activist investors are Juna capital and the shareholder advocacy group follow this to kill a proposed shareholder resolution that calls on Exxon to set more aggressive emissions. Cutting targets. The case filed in a Texas Federal District Court is a unusual effort to deter a shareholder campaign rather than appealing to the SEC on a given resolution. All right. Look, I I actually think in the last three I looked at the data. The last three, votes Arjuna has filed three shareholder. Proposals that got majority votes in the last three years. The one at Lowe's for a race gender pay gaps. One of Microsoft for sexual harassment policies and Kroger for race gender, pay gaps. 16 of their other. 65 proposals, since 2014 a Fortune 100 companies got more than 25% approval. This isn't some you know, investor who's just throwing out whatever with some social agenda, they're average overall support is 18% approval. Which as shareholder proposals go is really high is a strong number. So this they're not asking for something that shareholders don't want. It's not a social activist. This is a shareholder that tends to represent other shareholder demands in their shareholder. Proposals, the fact that Exxon is going against them and suing them is really just the anti-woke wind at their back thinking they can pick and choose the investors and shareholder proposals that they want to deal with or the ones that they don't. But the reality here is Arjuna, has been a good shareholder proposal. Filer. They've been a representative of shareholders. This is All Kabuki theater. In its lawsuit Exxon is alleging a quote extreme agenda. That looks to force ExxonMobil to change the nature of its ordinary business or to go out of business entirely. This is a bananas lawsuit from them and it's designed to hurt them so that they have to fight it. That's all it's designed to do. It's not designed with the interests of shareholders, moving over to our vote results table. Let's start with a small cap company aware, where shareholders were asked to vote on an option Exchange program, which essentially gives Executives another chance to make money off underwater options. The Proposal passed with 60% with 65% of the vote, but it is the nature of the vote that is. Most telling the total number of yes, votes was just over 10 million, 10 million 214,000 while the total number of votes held by insiders and top owners, including CEO Bob, eckel and director. John Stafford came to just over 10 million, 10 million 200,000. So it is, it is just the votes. The yes votes were just the people to benefit most the executives and top owners. Yeah. If you think your bones, don't count, that's 14,000 shares. Different from being a 0% shareholder approval. Like, why do we give like I know we like the Dual class founder fetish, but when the Insiders control it, this is what you get. You're all for their ride at large cap companies. The vote results came in at two meetings that we covered here in our big vote. First at Costco, wherever average, Directors support was 96%. Also only 6% rejected say on pay and 90% said, no to the anti-walk shareholder proposal. Let's get right to Matt's picks. I don't know. They really matter but you vote said, vote against Hamilton James vote against Craig, Gillette for sale on pay vote against the anti Walker proposal but you know I think in this case, Matt shareholders were Not listening to your advice, I'm shocked. Well, they should have listened to some of it, but I'm shocked that, you know, I, it's hard for me to believe they didn't. I will say that anti the anti-esg companies started, by former presidential candidate Vivek, ramaswamy called strive Asset Management, it was actually more aggressive than you, Matt. They they said to vote against seven of the 11 directors Costco. I have, I, I have nothing to say about strive except that we are aligned in voting against everything vote results are also in visa and other company. We covered here in the big vote again, all directors received between 97 percent in 9988 percent of vote for Ah, that's about it. Matt, again, your picks, you voted against the four directors, but shareholders, for very much in favor of all directors, at Visa look, here's what I would say. Go back to the proxy countdowns where we give the recommendations at Costco and visa and listen to our reasoning and maybe you'll vote differently next time because there's good reasons to vote against these directors. Before we get to the big Pho, I will say, they're also at large cap companies. The vote results came in for Dr. Horton into it and Micron Technology, but again, there's not much to see here out of all three companies, only two directors, even received votes above 10% against, but that number was right around 10%. So not a significant vote at least that the directors will not be leaving anytime soon. That's it. That's the big, that's the vote results table. It is now time for the big vote where we get to hear Matt weigh in on the world's most famous brand most beloved Brand. Apple, is there a more beloved brand than Apple? I don't think there is and I don't think there's a more disgust technology company. The then maybe Google it's neck and neck. Apple's annual meeting is coming up at the end of February and February 28th 2024, before I hand it over to Matt was a lot to say about this board. I will give you some general observations overall. The board. It's an average board. They're hitting 525, neither great neither but not bad. Of know last year, two directors ostensibly have been asked to step down because of a retirement age policy on the board that's Al Gore, former vice president Al Gore and James Bell, they both hit the retirement age of 75 and they stepped down which is, you know, a positive thing. But at the same time, Ron sugar, who was the audit committee chair who was also turning 75 is staying on the board because Apple has waived the retirement age, ballsy to his benefit. These really no, no Rhyme or Reason as to why other than that. I wanted to point out that it's a very interesting board in the Pope in the sense that in the post. Steve Jobs environment, that is Apple The apple board very much is a three-headed post-jobs leadership team. It's not what you think it is. It's not Tim Cook, does not control all the power here because he's a CEO. In fact, our data shows that there are three directors who basically have equal power and that is CEO. Tim Cook, chair art Levinson has been on the board since the year 2000 and a shareholder and a nomination committee chair. Susan Wagner, she is the co-founder of Black Rock and BlackRock owned 7% of Apple. So it's really those three directors that are data finds controls this board. So with that, Matt, I know you have a lot to say, I'm going to hand off. What are your observations recommendations? How do we handle the board at Apple? So it's worth going through where we started and we had a long discussion in pre-production about this because how do you assess a company that since Tim Cook took over? Apple has returned more than 1400 percent on its stock since Tim Cook took over which is four five times, the S&P 500 in the same time. This is a company that has It by all investor accounts had massive returns, it's one of the largest company and it's consistent year over year, in fact, this year, Apple's total shareholder return relative to other companies in the S P. 500 was at the 98th percentile for that performance, period every single year. But here's what happens when you actually dig into these numbers and I'm going to say something Blasphemous for Apple right now. But if we're honest, the top five selling products under Tim Cook are the iPhone launched and designed by Steve Jobs. The iPad launched in designed by Steve Jobs, the App Store launched in designed by Steve Jobs, the Apple watch which was launched under Tim Cook, but are indeed under Steve Jobs. He reportedly was into wearables and he started designing the Apple watch before it became a thing under, Tim Cook the airpods, which by all accounts were launched by Tim Cook. So Tim Cook. His background is an Ops guy with a quiet demeanor up. Sales. Yeah, he's brought into the CEO role. After a professional board was surrounded, the surrounded Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs. Who was ousted in the 90s brought back after they bought next made CEO? Again, everybody knows Steve Jobs was a Visionary. He was Mercurial hard to work with and they surrounded him with professional board members. Who would quote unquote control him? And what we see from a cultural or institutional standpoint is a board that looks exactly the same as the one that would control the CEO. But effectively now they're selling what the Visionary, CEO had built 10 or 15 years later and that is the basis for how they make their money today. Yeah, it seems like it seems like a company that build a big, beautiful cruise ship under Steve Jobs. And then when Steve passed away at a very young age, he would only be 68 today. The goal of the company was to push the ship out into the waters, and to have a very calmly, sell it right and sell it. And that's exactly what we've got up. Until the launch of the Apple Vision Pro, which is the first fully, Tim Cook a piece of Hardware, the apples coming out with but the board surrounding Tim, Cook is not a board that was designed to plan for 10 years from now. They are still managing from 15 years ago, okay? So that Is your backdrop. And I know it's Blasphemous to say this about a company that is returned exponential amounts of shareholder Capital like Cheryl your shareholder and apple, you love it. It's really hard. That would be, you'd be listening to this and saying like why do I care about anything that you're a long term holder? I've made so much money on this company. Maybe not if you're buying in today but as a long-term holder. Absolutely. But let's think about if you're holding this company for any more years going forward, right? Like, if you're buying it today or you're holding it going forward, this board is the third most powerful board network of us large cap companies. It is one of the most connected Juiced board members. The professional board members, not just in the US too, in the world. 78% of the Border, actually connected to each other inside of 2 degrees. So, friends or friends of friends, they are hugely insular. In fact, let me add that the only new board member this year is Under Austin. She's actually 69 years old. She's only six years shy of that retirement age. If they choose to honor it, she's 69, she's a former CEO of the Aerospace Corporation. A very impressive Woman by All, Because by impressive person, by all account, but I will say this to your point. Matt, she sits on the boards of Amgen and Chevron Ron sugar, the man who has been there since 2010, who they waived the retirement age policy for the audit chair, the audit committee chair. He also sits on the board of Amgen, and he also sat in the board of Chevron. It's almost like the same person, basically, that's what we're doing where it's. This is a very bowing like board, and as much as they're recycling, a lot of the same people from the same places that they know it is an investor friendly board, a CEO friendly board, every director at this board on their other boards. Not just that Apple they tend to pay out big dividends. They take out less debt and They pay tons of money to the CEO. They love paying their CEOs. They're in some of the highest CEO payers in the world. They are very customer unfriendly. In fact, Apple's bored as a team ranks in the top. 20 for large cap. Director teams for overseeing controversies, those controversies range from fraud consumer, you know, setlist selling malpractice, consumer, protection issues, Union quashing, and environmental issues. They've overseen it all on their other boards. Not just at Apple and they are definitely a regulator or government concerned board. These are directors that have direct experience working with the government, including at least one Andrea Jung who is one of sat on boards where they do a lot of lobbying, the executives give a lot to Democrats 85% of their donations and the last three elections. Were Democratic for Democratic nominees. And those are the executive teams, but you all have Ron sugar on the board who was from a military contractor, effectively at Northrop, Grumman for a long time. These are very Savvy directors. And you know what? I didn't say they have designers engineers. Three of the ten directors have any engineering experience and not one of them is Tim Cook, right? Like Tim Cook actually was an UPS guy in his background. He has an engineering degree from years ago but he's spent his entire career and opiates. And supply chain issues that leaves you with Ron sugar, who got an engineering degree in 1968 and art Levinson, who's a biotech guy. So the guy they waived the age restriction for to keep him around. And the guy who's been there for 23 years effectively, we are dealing with the designers and Engineers of the past to lead us into the future and they still represent a vast majority of this board. I will say it's a highly unusual situation because again, it's a it's a succession that happened because of a sudden death and it was and it was a succession that happened to take over for the world's most famous to your point engineer designer. The And who, who created the the brand, created the customer loyalty, created the design, like, everything, everything that we know and love about Apple was all in the hands of one person who died at a very young age. So it is an unusual situation and I will say this, too, because when you look at the skills Matrix, that Apple publishes. Now we talk about skills, matrices on our business pants, show the other day, but the skills Matrix that, that these companies put out, they put it out voluntarily. It's unregulated unregulated. Totally unregulated. They get to choose the skills. They include say what they want to say, say, whatever they want to say. So what I did because I said it looks like almost everyone on this board has Tech experience, right? But what I did was, I went through every board member and all the other skills, matrices of boards that they're on. So for instance, I we know that Andrea Jung also sits on the Unilever Board of the Wayfair board right now. On the apple board, she is tagged as a financial expert with no Tech expertise and no government expertise, but on the Unilever board, she's tagged as no Financial expertise, but she has Tech expertise in geopolitical expertise, the exact opposite between the two boards that suggested to me that looking through the skills Matrix, if you're looking to see does my board skills actually position me for the future for 10 years from now. You can't use the skills Matrix because you see that, Wanda Austin, the incoming director who you said already has an existing relationship with Ron sugar and the other board members. She's tagged already on Apple as being a financial expert, but on Amgen she's not, she's tagged at Chevron as being a international Affairs expert. But at Amgen she has no International Affairs. Expertise she's a financial expert at Virgin, Galactic and named as a public CEO at Virgin Galactic. She has never been a public CEO. In fact, she was the CEO of a company that was privately held the Aerospace Corporation. Yes. So, we're not talking about consistency in the skills matrices that can lead you to a place where you think that they're going to bring you into the future. In fact, there's an argument to be made that the skills may see our relatively fraudulent, their make believe. And there's no regulation that says they have to say something, but there are effectively selling these directors is having skills. They may not have. So the only thing you can rely on is what did they actually do? Who are these people actually? And do they know each other? So this gets me to this this theory of change of the apple board, okay? What you may want, if you are investing for 10 years from now? Not for now, I want a less insular board. You can get the same performance of these board members with less connected directors. We've seen it before, you can see it here, and we want directors that are designed for the future, we're talking about a future in which AI is pervasive, and it's going to be in the purview of the executives. Those Executives will need guardrails and those guardrails should come from the board members. You need them to have future Tech experience or be building or involved with future Tech treat this hardware company more like other hardware and tech companies, and put in people who understand the tech. So, my recommendations for this board. Yes, is a staggered set of voting out because clearly Apple, if they're willing to waive their retirement, restriction for Ron sugar, It means that they are not willing to let go of the past, right? I the recommendations start with vote out Ron sugar which, which I, you know, which is not an aggressive move. Considering that the, the new director wanted to Austin again is basically a carbon copy of him of Ron sugar. She has more recent engineering experience more, recent Tech experience, and she has all the same connections. They sit on the same boards. So she's got better, engineering bonify days, and the same connections, what do you need? Ron sugar for? And again, yeah, him to groom her. In fact, she is a well-accomplished director and again from a corporate governance perspective. If you're gonna have a retirement age Polly and two directors are stepping down because of that policy, you probably should stick to the policy and asked Ron sure to move on. I think that's correct. Yeah you you consistent with the policy and second and this cycle I think you vote out Sue Wagner. Sue Wagner is The chair of the nominating committee and she is a shareholder by proxy through our association, with BlackRock, we don't need that proxy. We don't need BlackRock already has plenty of influence on this board. We don't need Sue Wagner to represent either BlackRock or to be the head of the nominating committee and keep up the same cycle of insular, directors, rotating, in, and out. And that's the first year, I think, by next year by 2025, you let art Levinson retire. Well he will, he will be 75 in less than two years, which means he's going to be up against that age. He's been there for 23 years. If he won't retire then you have to vote him out. It's time to move on Steve Jobs is now been gone for 12 years. 13 years. It's time now to move on and move into the future so you yeah go ahead. I was gonna say what's hopeful about this is if you remove those three directors in the next couple of years you've opened up 37. You've opened up. Roughly 40, 45% of board influence. That's what can only be a good thing for a long-term view here, right at Apple. Right. And I think you need to bring in Design or tech-oriented people, you want to replace some of that void with somebody. You know, I'm thinking of the deposed board members from openai, right? What if you were to put one of those women on this board, right? That's those are people who are highly accomplished and proven their independence, right? Like proven their ability to follow the Mandate of the board. No Mandate of apples boards. Not going to be the same as open AI. It's going to be more about profit maximization, and it's a company sells Hardware. It's not a non-profit. It's not Mission driven as was written at open AI, but imagine having someone like that. Who understands the future, and the guardrails required for it. Yeah. And again, I will say, the opportunity is very real here because again, these three directors represent, 47% of influence. So you could be constructing half of your board, that is future facing. That could have expertise and things like AI engineering design technology. It's an opportunity for shareholders and there are also The next board, the next in the next three to five years. We're seriously going to be talking about Tim Cook succession plan. How long is Tim? Cook going to be around? We do not need an Ops person anymore to run Apple, unless you just want it to sail on its historical technology. We wanted to sell into the future right, which but that means you need a board who's designed not to contain the CEO and sail. The Carnival Cruise Line to Future diarrhea. We need them to build something new. What's the next generation of stuff? Nobody likes future diarrhea. What, why don't we wrap up your choice on the board and we can move on to the other proposals at Apple, what wrap up your final Choice. Here is for in 2025 you've removed Andrea Jung as well and you'd add more engineering and then 2026 you flip the rest but I think overall summary here is this year you focus on sugar Ron sugar he had a long run enough influence and vote out Sue Wagner. Chico, and a construction of the nominee. And again, I will say not an aggressive choice because Ron sugar has reached the retirement age. Just comply pouring to their policy. Moving on to say on pay. I will say that 12% of shareholders voted against Sean pay last year considerably more than they were voting against directors. And I'm guessing part of the issue here is Tim Cook makes a lot of money at Apple. He's made 261 million dollars over the last three years but again total shareholder return relative to the sp500 is very strong. So I don't know if you want to weigh in here, Sam pay, look, I think you vote, for, in this case, I know that there are, I think it's hard to vote against and hard to justify giving their performance. But I do think that you're not voting for, Tim Cook's performance, you're voting for Tim Cook. Guiding Steve Jobs's performance to this point. I mean, effectively, Tim Cook is largely getting a vote for being even Keel and doing an excellent job of keeping Apple in the Steve Jobs, put it in shareholder proposals and then we can wrap up the show for the week of January 22nd. There are five Shirley proposals at Apple this year. Three of them are anti-woke, will start with the national Center for Public Policy research, which seems to now have a proposal at every S&P, 500 company. They have a proposal asking Apple to issue a public report detailing, the potential risks associated with omitting Viewpoint and ideology from its written equal employment opportunity. We see this one a lot. You like, I just love that, they're there. Now straight cribbing from what they consider to be woke proposals. They said, quote companies with inclusive policies are better able to recruit the most talented employees from a broad labor pool of resolve complaints internally and avoid costly litigation or reputational damage. And they moreover inclusive policies. Contribute to more efficient, human Capital Management. Like this is language that the ESG Community has been saying for a decade and I love that they're using Dei language for ideological, you know, antidepression except that. They miss the whole point of Dei is Dei isn't a choice. Your sexual orientation, your gender orientation or fluidity race at the city. These are born attributes liking Ronald Reagan is a choice. Liking Pizza is a choice. I'm conservative on how much milk. I drink and liberal how much pizza I consume. So what Do I report? What's the report here? These are stupid you vote against, so let's vote. It's a no one number four proposal number five. Another anti-wolf proposal from the American Family Association, an organization that not only opposes LGBT rights, but they also oppose lgbtq expression. That's pretty hard hardcore. There it is. But but yeah, there's proposal. Yes, they're asking for different. They're asking for a report on, ensuring the respect for civil liberties. And one of the issues that they raised was that they're concerned about Apple's threat, to remove Twitter owned by Elon Musk from its App Store. A seemingly political swipe, Which look, I don't it the justification. I find to be relatively horrid but what they're actually asking for is a report detailing, how apps get chosen and how app disputes with governments are resolved, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. They actually provide an app transparency report about the number of apps that could take him down and some of the reasons like what what brings them down. But they don't talk about how they actually resolve disputes with governments or resolve disputes with those app. People, like the people who start the apps, I'm curious what this report looks like. Why not vote for it? Give him a win proposal. Number six, we talked about our junah Capital already, they're being sued by Exxon Mobil. They ever proposal racial and gender pay gaps. They want to report. They want more details and better disclosure, I think in a nutshell. Yeah, I think this is a vote for and Apple's complaint. Here are suggestion for vote against is we already produced these? Numbers are June is as saying you produce this number but we ask for that number. It's it's it's basically an unadjusted number. They say, take the number that you gave us and just back it up to the unadjusted number. That's the real number your obscuring, the real number, it's a vote for this is, I don't know why Apple would even fight this. Just put it in a report. Well, in five seconds and for a little bit of History here, this shirt holder proposals already popular worth shareholders last year, the same proposal got 35% in support. That's a significant number proposal. Number seven, a report on the use of AI. This one comes from the AFL-CIO. They say I should there asking for a transparency report on the company's use of AI and its business operations and disclosed any ethical guidelines at the companies adopted regarding the companies use of AI, blah, blah blah. Mostly I think as it relates to labor, two of the issues that they point out, the use of AI in Human Resources decisions, May raise concerns about discrimination or bias and the use of AI to automate jobs, may result in Mass layoffs. So, that's proposal number seven coming from the AFL CIO. You know, the justifications here are also relatively meaningless to me. Like, what Apple said in in response was this was too broad and ask and it might, it would make us compromise our, you know, our IP in some way or our strategic plans that to me, seems like BS, you can report on how AI is figuring into your future without disclosing this. And we are all at a place where we're talking about. How AI could destroy Humanity, Apple just produced the report. I don't understand why that's that hardest, not a ridiculous ass what for? And finally proposal number 8, another anti woke A proponent, a national legal and policy Center is asking for a congruence report on privacy in human rights. This one is very similar to number five. And we've seen this proposal before too. Well, this one is similar in as much as they make it sound similar, but different in as much as the ask here is actually it's they they're upset because Apple didn't win the Ukraine. Invasion happened by Russia. Apple pulled out of sales in Russia and they're upset because it lost the company in estimated 1.14 billion dollars in sales from rushing customers. So, what they're upset about, is that Tech wasn't sold to Russia. That's what we're upset about. Meanwhile total revenue for Apple was 383 billion so there are upset at less than a half a percent of Total sales. This is dumb vote against it. This is the, this is a stupid. Anti-walk proposal to wrap up the big vote. On Apple mattress saying vote against Ron. Sugar, vote against Sue Wagner. That's a yes. On Sean, pay and then it's a vote. No on proposal. Number four, shelter. Proposal number four vote. Yes. On proposal number five, vote. Yes, on six vote, on AI vote. Yes, you vote. Yes, and no one number eight and no one number eight. That's a lot Apple. They're both coming up February 28th 2024. That's the proxy countdown for the week of January. 22nd 2024, join us next week. When we jump back into the alternative democracy pool Forever on the lookout for shareholder, sharks floating Band-Aids and Wayward directors.