Oprah Drops WeightWatchers & Why are Billionaires Buying Land in Hawaii

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0:28Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell. And I'm Kyle Heggie. Today, there's a new humanoid robot on the block that is aiming to be the vessel that brings AI to life. And we're talking about the billionaire secretly buying up land in Hawaii. It's Friday, March 1st. Let's ride.

0:52Kyle, wonderful of you to join us as Neil takes a much-deserved day off. It's been a minute since you've been under the big bright lights. I thought you guys forgot about me. We absolutely did not. You're looking stellar as always, but we've definitely picked up some new listeners since your last podcast appearance. So can you take a minute to kind of reintroduce yourself to the world and talk about what you do outside of guest hosting this podcast? I mean, I'm focused on the podcast. I'm wearing the morning for daily sweatshirt. This is all I think about when I have other time. I have to reintroduce myself to the entire listeners.

1:24I'm an only child. Okay. I'm from Minnesota. And really, I am either listening to podcasts or recording them. Big podcast person. I love to read. And I like to explore New York City. I feel like I'm doing like hinge prompts or something. You're doing great. You put me on the spot. And I actually learned a lot about you right there. I didn't know you were an only child. but no, it makes sense. Yeah, it explains a lot. Well, thank you for joining us. And yeah, Neil will be back on Monday. Before we jump into the show today, let's hear a word from our new sponsor, Factor. Factor makes delicious, ready-to-eat meals that come fresh, never frozen, and are crafted by their team of expert chefs.

2:01Seriously, these things are restaurant quality. Easy, Toby. I can see your mouth watering on the mic right now. I'm just picturing an unopened Factor meal, so much deliciousness inside. I just want to rip off the film and dive right in. Okay, contain yourself. We have a podcast to film. The one reason I'm super excited about Factor, Morning Brew gets our own code. So head to factormeals.com slash morningbrew50, then use the code morningbrew50 to get 50 % off. That's code morningbrew50 at factormeals.com slash morningbrew50 to get 50 % off. Raise the runners. Raise the sails. Raise the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching.

2:43Over. Roger. Wait, is that an enterprise sales solution? Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started today at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply. And for our first story, Toby, we're going straight to the top. We're talking Oprah Winfrey. Now, Oprah has announced that she's going to be leaving the Weight Watchers board after serving on it since 2015. And not only was she serving on the board, she was the company's largest shareholder with a stake of around 10 % in the company.

3:26To highlight the Oprah effect, when she joined the board, the valuation went up$700 million. And on her announcement that she's leaving the board, the stock is now down 18%. So, Oprah is having a big impact on Weight Watchers. But the intrigue here is that Weight Watchers said Winfrey's decision is meant partly to, quote, eliminate any perceived conflict of interest around her taking weight loss medications. It sounds like Oprah is on Ozempic or some sort of similar drug, and they think that there might be a conflict of interest around this. Super interesting story. What's your take? Yeah. Late last year, Oprah revealed in this interview that she was using these weight loss medications.

4:07she told uh people magazine that she had to overcome her own shame about it she uses it to help uh her weight not yo-yo back and forth but everyone when she said that was kind of like wait a second oprah you've been the face of weight washers for such a long time ozempic and wagovin these other weight loss medications are in direct competition with kind of weight washers general premise so it was an interesting thing and that was kind of the writing on the wall to that relationship eventually breaking down. Oprah insists there's no drama here, but again, it is definitely a new era of Weight Watchers predicated by Oprah leaving and also competing against these new class of drugs.

4:45It's really interesting. I mean, Weight Watchers has an incredible brand. They've been around for 60 plus years. I actually think they messed up here because GLP-1 drugs, Ozempic, they're coming. And it doesn't mean that you don't need to be conscientious about your lifestyle. In fact, a lot of doctors are saying, yeah, these drugs are really powerful, but you still need to worry about the lifestyle aspects. And I think Weight Watchers could have been this brand that's like, yeah, take Ozempic, but you also need us to work with your diet, work with your lifestyle. And Oprah could have been the face of that.

5:16I feel like they fumbled here. They haven't fumbled yet, though, because I think you're dead on. The real question is, can Weight Watchers and Ozempic coexist? And you're totally right. Technically, they are supposed to because a lot of clinicians are saying, hey, listen, you can't just hop on these drugs and then expect the weight to stay off forever. You do need to also augment them with lifestyle changes. And Weight Watchers has been doing that for a long time. If we do dig into the financial tale, though, you are right. They are maybe fumbling a little bit. Weight Watchers revenue dropped nearly 15 % in 2023 compared to the year prior.

5:52In 2021, if we go back to 2021, Weight Watchers' share price was just around$40 per share. Yesterday, it plummeted to around$3 a share. And then its market cap is currently dwarfed by its outstanding debt, which is more than five times its valuation. So, there's definitely some stuff that Weight Watchers has to work through. Losing Oprah, not a great start to the Ozempic GLP-1 era, but let's see if they can kind of... And they recently had purchased this telehealth company, Sequence, as well, which is very interesting because basically this company allows you to speed up the process to get these drugs.

6:26So it seems like they're like on one side, like these drugs are powerful on the other side being like Oprah, get lost. You never tell Oprah to get lost. I hope they tell Oprah to get lost. I think it was just an amicable part of this because you do not tell Oprah to get lost. Let's move on. You know how they say to future proof your resume by always learning new skills and staying up to date with current trends in the workplace? Well, future proofing just got a little bit harder because a startup called Figure AI just raised$675 million at a$2.6 billion valuation to further develop an AI-powered, general-purpose humanoid robot.

7:03The cap table reads like a who's who of AI these days. Microsoft, NVIDIA, Intel, Cathie Woods, ARK Invest, and even Jeff Bezos participated in the funding round. Figure is aiming super high here. The goal of the company, which is just 21 months old is to eliminate the need for unsafe and undesirable jobs, which is admirable. But anytime robots, AI, and eliminate jobs appear in the same sentence, it gets people a little antsy. Kyle, as someone who has talked to people quite often about their careers, what was your initial impression seeing figures vision for disrupting the labor market? I do first have to say robots, job loss, AI, like the SEO on this thing is going crazy.

7:43I mean, it's interesting. This company is fascinating to me. They had this video where they kind of revealed the technological prowess of their robot, and it was a robot making a Keurig. So we're still really, really far away from this having, I think, real impact on the workforce. But the technology is still pretty remarkable. I mean, one, it'll make you a Keurig. It won't ask you how your weekend was. So it's already better than most of your coworkers. That's great. But now with, you know, ChatGBT, like they figured out the cognition part. Combining the cognition part with like the mechanical elements of these robots is going to be really powerful.

8:19And the effects, if they can commercialize this product, are going to be profound. I mean, you could have these in every Amazon warehouse, for example. It would replace a lot of monotonous jobs. And obviously there's going to be some real world implications. But I think that's decades away. I am going to ignore the comment because I am one of your coworkers. You don't want to talk to me in the morning? What the heck? Just you, Toby. But you're so right on the cognition part. You mentioned ChatGPT. Part of their announcement yesterday was OpenAI also is partnering with Figure to help develop the next generation of AI models for humanoid robots.

8:52So Figure is taking on the physical, how AI can interact with the physical world. Well, yes, OpenAI has technically already made a lot of progress on the brains of AI. So it is quite a formidable partnership. My thing that is so interesting about humanoid robots is I've always wondered why do all these companies insist on making their robots look like humans? Technically, they don't have to look human. They are robots. They could just be a giant tube for what all we care. But all these companies have kind of said in the past that the reason why we make them look like humans is because the world is designed for the human body.

9:29like door handles are at the certain height walkways are the perfect size for humans to pass through so the best way the human form is the best operating system in which to interact with the physical world and i also think there's also something about you want the the robots to not look intimidating yes you want them to look like not human enough that you don't get too nervous and i think there's a big public perception thing that figure is also working with so those are some of the reasons why you always see these robots end up looking like tiny little humans. Yeah, it does give them a human feel, which I think is important.

10:04And what's interesting about Figur is there's tons of robots, but they typically do like one niche task. The idea with this is like it's a general robot that can, like one robot could do like 50, 100, 1 ,000 human tasks. And this is a really long game. There are robots that are like could take a box, put it on a shelf. There's not a robot that could take a box, put it on a shelf, do a backflip, make you a Keurig, and host to podcasts, our jobs are safe for now. Also, the founder of this company is a really successful entrepreneur. He's taken two other companies, one company public, got another company acquired for $100 million.

10:37He's really good at raising money. He's really good at setting a vision. I think this is an interesting company to watch. All right, let's move on to our next story. Toby, we're talking about a match made in heaven. It's not peanut butter and jelly. It's not Toby and Neil. It's not you and ordering McDonald's at 3 a.m. after a night out. It's billionaires in Hawaii. That's right. Business leaders with net worths equivalent to the GDP of several countries are purchasing massive parcels of land in the island state. Jeff Bezos owns a sprawling beach mansion in Maui. Mark Zuckerberg of Morning Brew Daily fame is cattle ranching in Kauai.

11:11And Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder, owns 98 % of lanai. And since the pandemic, Mark Benioff, founder of Salesforce, has been on a Hawaiian shopping spree as well, purchasing 22 parcels of land in just three years. That's right. Mark Benioff, the guy telling his employees they should stop WFH or working from home, has been WFHing himself, a.k.a. working from Hawaii. And this small town he's been purchasing land in, Weimai, is this really tight-knit community. They have a large native Hawaiian population. And the people here say they don't want to lose that culture. And that's kind of the fear that a lot of Hawaiians have, that this quote-unquote mainland money is coming in, purchasing parcels, and maybe disrupting their way of life.

11:54What's your take on all this? Yeah, so an NPR reporter sat down with Mark Benioff and kind of dug into exactly what the heck is going on. When they were first talking to locals around the island, no one really knew what Mark Benioff was up to. Some thought he was building a Salesforce training center, was moving a bunch of engineers to Hawaii, and basically having a big old, I don't know what you'd call it, retreat on the island. And others say that he's been helping the community. Others also just shook their head and said, listen, we have no idea what's going on, but we're not liking that. It's probably going to drive up housing prices.

12:27But digging into it, Mark Benioff has had this very long history with Hawaii. That's right. The founding story of Salesforce involves him swimming with dolphins off the coast of the Big Island in the 1990s. And having a vision of selling software as a subscription service over the Internet. So the very fabric of Salesforce is tied to the island. And it does appear that a lot of his purchases do have some sort of philanthropic tie. He wants to invest in this community that has given a lot to him. But it is interesting to see Hawaii as kind of the flame that attracts the billionaire moths. Yes. Toby, I literally wrote down that SaaS dream.

13:06And I'm like, man, if you're swimming with dolphins and you come out thinking about subscription software, like something's up. Something's wrong. Something's up. You know, what's interesting about the Benioff story is it has been like very like mysterious. And locals are just basically saying when there's not clarity or disclosure about what's going on, like people have these fears. Like the rumor mill kind of starts churning. This article was really, really good. I recommend everyone read it. But the headline was Mark Benioff is buying up a ton of land in Hawaii. No one knows why. I feel like that's saying like billionaires are buying yachts and hanging with supermodels and no one knows why.

13:40Like NPR, I know why. It's Hawaii. We all get why he's doing this. But yes, he has had a long history with Hawaii. This will be interesting to see how this all shakes out. And I guess he's swimming with dolphins. Yeah, the final note here is that the big fear is that home prices are just going to start rising out of control. Across the state of Hawaii, median home prices have risen by at least 22 % from pre-pandemic times. And Waimea, where we're talking about, it is crazy, crazy. The median home prices have topped$1 million in January, up 87 % from prices before the pandemic. So those fear of rising home prices are definitely valid.

14:18All right, before we jump into our next story, we're going to take a quick break. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from EPCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintained skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EBCLIS, LibriKizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

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15:28When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. My favorite time of the week is here, and that's Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time, where we bring you one stock that matches your energy in any situation, and one that's just kind of a buzzkill.

16:07As always, Kyle and I are just humble podcasters, so please do not take any of this as financial advice. Kyle, I can't believe this, but you beat me in the cool sweatshirt-wearing contest this morning. So you're up first. What is our Stock of the Week? That's right. You can't go wrong with the MBD sweatshirt. My stock of the week is the Jacksonville Jaguars. Now, unfortunately, this doesn't mean you can buy the team unless you are a billionaire going through a midlife crisis. But what this does mean is that the second annual NFL Players Association team report cards just dropped. And the biggest increase came from the Jacksonville Jaguars, who went from 28th to 5th this year.

16:42Now, the bad news for the Jaguars, this doesn't mean the Jaguars are the fifth best team in the league. but rather they're essentially the fifth best team that people want to play for when it comes to lifestyle, training facilities for players. And the reason for this big jump is they got rid of rats. They had a rat infestation for three to four weeks in their locker room, and they literally got a new facility, no more rats, and then their ranking went up. So if you're looking to boost your ranking, get rid of the rats. The other interesting thing from this association report was the back-to-back Super Bowl champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, ranked 31st out of 32 in this survey.

17:19So maybe good facilities are overrated. It appears the data proves that. This report is always so interesting. It's an annual report. This year, 1 ,706 players, nearly 76 % of every player in the league, was surveyed. You basically get the T on everything that's going on in the NFL. And I do think the rat thing is hilarious. The Jaguars, everyone's like, listen, all you had to do was get rid of a rat infestation and we are happy i do think the kansas city chiefs are incredibly interesting right they're big uh knocks where uh their owner clark hunt ranked 32nd among all owners as the least likely to invest in his facilities but andy reed did rank as the top head coach around the league so if you if you have the choice between bad owner and bad coach you definitely take the bad owner and like if it ain't broke don't fix it like this guy's like we don't need new facilities.

18:11You keep winning. Maybe they should lose a little. Some of the other weird stuff that came out of the survey, former Raiders head coach, Josh McDaniels was ranked as the worst head coach. So Raiders fans, I know how you feel about that. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers weirdly has been charging players around 1700 bucks to opt out of having a roommate on road trips, which again, like it's the, this is the NFL we're talking about. Why are you charging your own players to get out of having roommates? And then also the Bengals who last year didn't provide three meals a day at all for any of their players.

18:42This year, they're turning over New Leaf and providing three meals a day to their players, but only on Wednesdays for some reason. Super interesting. It's so funny how different you expect the NFL to operate as this high star-studded league where everyone's getting pampered all the time. Not the case. Yeah, so they're charging players. And Toby, if we were on a road trip, I would room with you. And I wouldn't pay$1 ,700 to not room with you. Don't tell Neil that, but I appreciate that. Let's move on to our dog of the week, which is the cloud software company Snowflake. There was an interesting scenario on Wednesday where you got a chance to see exactly how much the public markets value a company's CEO.

19:19Snowflake announced that its chief exec, Frank Slootman, who had been leading the company since 2019, was retiring and shares immediately plunged 24 % after hours trading, erasing around$17 billion in market cap in a matter of minutes. Now, I should add that Frank Slootman is kind of the Lionel Messi of Enterprise Software. He previously took Data Domain and ServiceNow Public, as well as Snowflake back in 2020. Slutman is maybe one of only a handful of public market CEOs, where a stock would immediately tank on news of their retirement. But it was interesting to see it play out in real time like that.

19:53Incredible succession vibes, where it's like, this is dad. You literally saw the market value drop$17 billion just because this guy's leaving. Now, the person who's filling in or coming into the CEO role is their senior VP of AI. Obviously, AI is a hot topic. So, there's still some hope. Like, the earnings were actually beat expectations. That also demonstrates how important Slootman was or is perceived to be, because they did better than expected, and the stock dropped$17 billion. Right. There was a little bit of contamination, though, because their forecast, they issued a little bit of a weaker forecast for the upcoming quarter.

20:26But you're right. They did technically beat on a lot of earnings. So we did see that it was mostly purely just Slootman's retirement. It got me thinking, what other CEO do you think could have this impact if they step down? Which company do you think would suffer a 24 % drop like this? Oh, that's a good question. My immediate mind goes to Mark Zuckerberg, actually. He has been the co-founder and the CEO of Facebook for decades. I don't even know his succession plan. They've never even hinted at someone else coming. If he just left, I think Facebook would be in a tough spot. That was definitely the name that came to mind.

21:00I also thought maybe you'd say Mark Benioff because he was top of mind. Also founder, CEO. Yeah, but it is interesting to think. I was wondering, too, if Elon Musk suddenly stepped down from Tesla, would the stock tank? Or at this point, would it just kind of waffle? I think if he stepped down from Tesla, the stock would tank. If he stepped down from Twitter, the stock would go off. That is dead on. All right, let's move on to a really interesting story here about financial health and friends. You know those random parables your parents would tell you when you were growing up? It turns out at least one is true, and that is comparison is the thief of joy.

21:34So Edelman Financial Engines just dropped this really interesting survey where they looked at 2 ,000 people regarding their attitudes towards wealth. And the finding was about one quarter said they feel less satisfied with the amount of money they have because of social media. And one third has said they spent more than they could afford basically to keep up with the Joneses after seeing like Instagram and other apps of people's lifestyles. And this falls in line with other recent studies that we've probably all heard of. One that looked at how different groups compare their own financial well-being after learning where they were ranked within their peer group.

22:09And essentially, if you're doing really well and you see that other people are doing worse than you, you feel happier. And if you're not doing well, even if objectively maybe you didn't know how other people are doing and you were fine with it, once you have that subjective experience of not doing well, you feel way worse about your position. This explains a lot about human psychology and how just humans interact socially with each other. It's a big explanation, too, for why the heck no one really feels great about the economy. Despite the economy looking very promising in a lot of areas. I mean, we got cooling inflation, a strong labor market, a GDP that grew 3.1 % over the past year.

22:46But it doesn't really matter if the economy grew 3.1 % if your neighbor Jim just bought a sick new set of golf clubs for himself or something like that. So you are so right. Comparison and especially the social media aspect of it where it's so easy to see what other people are putting out as the highlights of your life. It affects you and affects your financial well-being. Right. And it used to be like you could only compare yourself to your neighbors. They probably had a similar lifestyle to you. You're spot on, Toby. Like now with social media, every day I wake up and I see Mark Zuckerberg bought a new house in Hawaii.

23:16I'm like, man, I'm not doing enough here. And the article in the Wall Street Journal is really interesting because they followed this couple that essentially like was feeling really bad about social media in making it compare their finances. And they just got more involved like locally. And they really focused on like their own situation. They got involved with their local chamber of commerce. And they said they felt a lot better. I think it's just a good lesson for all of us. Like sometimes stepping away from social, getting back to reality, you know, turns out it makes you feel good. Yeah. I mean, it's not revolutionary, but it's much harder to do than you might think.