Tylenol Maker Bought for $40B & Coke Doubles Down on AI Ads

0:00Hey Fidelity, how can I remember to invest every month? With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs. Oh, that sounds easier than I thought. You got this. Yeah, I do. Now, where did I put my keys? You will find them where you left them. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC, member NYSE SIPC.

0:31Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Palantir's CEO turned an earnings call into fight night. Then Coca-Cola thinks the best way to spread holiday cheer is through AI-generated ads. It's Tuesday, November 4th. Let's ride.

0:51Good morning and happy election day, which, despite being on an off-year, features high-stakes races across the country. People around the world will be watching New York City's mayoral race, where self-described Democratic socialist Zoran Mamdani could become the next leader of the global hub of capitalism. There are also big gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, while Californians will vote on a measure that would allow Democrats to redraw the state's house map. If you need me later, I'm gonna be locked in on the results coming out of Queens County, which has picked the mayor of New York every election since 1989.

1:24First, impeccable use of the word gubernatorial. Always good when you can get that into a show. And then second, if early voting is any indication in New York City, there is going to be record turnout today. New York City's Board of Elections said 735 ,000 voters cast ballots during the early voting period, which is more than five times the number of early voters in 2021. In total, turnout is predicted to reach about 2 million voters. If that number proves to be accurate, that would outpace any New York City mayoral election dating back to 1969, according to the newsletter 1440. So I guess get in line early because there's probably going to be some crowds.

2:02And now a word from our sponsor, U.S. Bank. Picture this, Neil. You're inviting all of your friends over for a movie night, myself included. You included? That's presumptuous. Stay with me. You've got everything ready from snacks to surround sound. There's just one problem. Your couch. It's time to get a new one, man. Fine. Luckily, I don't have to pay out of pocket thanks to the U.S. Bank Split World MasterCard. Introducing the U.S. Bank Split World MasterCard, a new type of card that lets you pay later on every purchase. With the split card, all purchases are automatically divided into three payments and placed into a payment plan to be paid back over three months.

2:37If you're looking for additional flexibility, any purchase over$100 can be extended to six or 12 months with equal monthly payments for a low monthly fee. Whether you're paying for an unexpected bill or are buying a new sofa like me, pay later on every purchase with the U.S. Bank Split Card. Learn more at usbank.com slash splitcard. That's usbank.com slash splitcard. Consumer goods giant Kimberly Clark is reaching for the medicine cabinet and popping a couple Tylenol. Yesterday, the company announced it agreed to buy Kenview, the maker of Tylenol, in a nearly$50 billion deal that's one of the largest this year.

3:13When the acquisition closes, the combined company will be with you every step on life's journey. Kimberly Clark and Kenview together have$10 billion brands that stock the nursery to the nursing home. They'll supply Huggies diapers before you're potty trained, Listerine mouthwash you'll use before prom, Tylenol for your hangovers in college, Kleenex when you watch your first child get married, Band-Aids when you realize you aren't as athletic as you used to be, and depends when it all comes back full circle. Kenview investors were also getting sentimental, sending the battered stock up 12 % thanks to the lifeline Kimberly Clark just threw their way.

3:46Spun out of Johnson & Johnson in 2022, Kenview has struggled as an independent consumer healthcare company, despite a stable of iconic brands like Tylenol, Benadryl, Neutrogena, Sudafed, and Neosporin. Shares are down nearly 35 % since its IPO three years ago, and 2025 has brought even more headaches. In September, President Trump made unfounded claims linking the use of the active ingredient in Tylenol during pregnancy to higher risk of autism, causing a fresh sell-off in Kenview stock. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton followed that up by suing Kenview for alleged deceptive marketing to pregnant women.

4:21So, Toby, Kimberly Clark is making a$49 billion bet that the Tylenol legal clouds will blow over. Yeah, activists have been circulating this company for a long time now, pushing for something to change in this business. And Kimberly Clark said, all right, we'll step in and be that change agent. But you are right. The big story here is all the legal scrutiny that is surrounding the Tylenol maker. A lot of analysts say that Kimberly Clark might be entering a Bayer-Monsanto situation, which is basically when you acquire a company with so much legal liabilities that it just offsets any profits you are hoping to gain.

4:56So if you can figure out those legal liabilities, if maybe the political undercurrents change and the winds start blowing away from all the scrutiny on Tylenol, then maybe you did just get a household brand name for a pretty solid discount. If those things don't blow over, then you just overpaid for a brand that is going to have more headaches than profits. Wall Street sure seems skeptical that this deal will go through. So, Kenview's stock did go up 12 % yesterday, but it's sitting at just$16 now. Kimblee Clark agreed to pay$21 a share for this company. So, they're going to buy it at$21 a share.

5:29It's right now at$16 after the deal was announced. That gap indicates that investors aren't really sure that this deal will get regulatory approval or they won't back out. But Kimberly-Clark, CEO, got up to the mic yesterday and said, we met with all the medical, regulatory, and legal experts and ultimately concluded that this deal is a, quote, generational value creation opportunity for both companies. Kenview, CEO, has also come out and said, we stand behind the science of our products. These things have been studied for decades. So RFK Jr., the top health official in the United States, has already backed off the claims around Tylenol and autism.

6:07President Trump hasn't really done that. So maybe RFK's move back was one of the reasons that spurred this deal to be made on Monday. And then just from a business perspective, too, CPG companies in general are trying to move away from some of these lower margin categories like tissues or diapers that have been increasingly coming under tariff pressure as well, just facing margin pressure in general and trying to move into the health and wellness space where margins are a little bit better. So maybe this pivot towards premium products will just work out for Kimberly Clark. So maybe that's what's the conversation that's going on in the boardroom right now saying, all right, you can only sell so many tissues.

6:44There's only so much margin in that business. Let's try to snap up this business that has a more premium product line. It has those over-the-counter drugs. And so this acquisition potentially accelerates that shift. Moving on, Palantir reported earnings yesterday. And according to its CEO, it's in the nosebleed zone. Reporting growth so rarefied, you need to bring a tissue to even set eyes upon it. Its revenue grew 63 % compared to last year. It raised its annual outlook for the rest of the year to$4.4 billion, and it extended its streak to 21 consecutive quarters, beating analyst estimates. The stock is now up 175 % this year, though it's currently down about 7 % in pre-market trading.

7:25Now, what does Palantir do other than have a stock that seemingly only goes up? The work is both mysterious and important. It sells AI software to governments with controversial contracts with the U.S.'s immigration enforcement arm and large companies like Ferrari and Airbus to help organize data and make better decisions. Alex Karp, its outspoken CEO, said that the company's climb to a$490 billion valuation with a forward price-to-earnings ratio of almost 280 has, quote,

8:03So yes, Neil, Karp thinks it's bursting blood vessels with its growth, and he isn't afraid to rub it in the faces of any who dare doubt this company. We haven't seen this kind of trash talking since Kevin Garnett. I mean, you look at this earnings call, and he was absolutely rubbing it in the face of these analysts who are skeptical of Palantir. He said, by any normal or even reasonable standard, these are not normal results. They are not even strong results. These are arguably the best results that any software company has ever delivered. He added, we were right, you were wrong, and we are going to be very, very deep in our rightness.

8:36Please turn on the conventional television and see how unhappy those that didn't invest in us are. Enjoy. Get some popcorn. They're crying. And the people he's addressing are analysts who are looking at how expensive this stock is. It has a price-to-sales ratio of 85. It's the most expensive stock in the S &P 500. And they're saying, we don't quite understand how this stock is so high. Revenue growth of 63 % is nice, but it's not what NVIDIA was doing for the past couple of years. So you had DA Davidson's Gil Loria saying, all these numbers are completely disengaged from fundamentals. RBC Capital Markets wrote, we cannot rationalize why Palantir is the most expensive name in our software coverage.

9:16So all the analysts on Wall Street are saying, we don't quite understand it. And then Alex Karp, on the other hand, said we are riding a wave of retail enthusiasm because they're getting a lot of a lot of power from those the individual investors who believe in it. And, you know, their results keep going up, except the stock is down a little bit like pretty much everything else this morning. Meanwhile, Palantir is also making waves in the education space, which is not something you would normally associate with the company. It wants to start this fellowship that it's calling a meritocracy fellowship, where it's inviting 22 high school students from a ton of applications to participate in this four-month intensive program where they will teach them about Western civilization, U.S.

9:57history, political movements, as well as teaching them technical skills to eventually become forward-deployed engineers within the company. So they're making this bet that traditional education system is born. You'd be better off, you know, skipping that, going on a fast track to working at Palantir. And apparently 22 people agree with that and want to participate in this program. So it kind of mirrors a similar thing from Peter Thiel, the Thiel Fellowship, which is you pay someone$100 ,000 to skip college altogether and start building a program. So it's no matter what it does, it almost wants to spur controversy.

10:30And this is just another instance of it kind of pushing the envelope here. Tomorrow, Chinese online retailer Shein will open its first physical store in the heart of Paris, a move that's generated outrage in the fashion capital of the world. What happened yesterday didn't exactly endear the company anymore to the French public. On Monday, the French government threatened to ban Shein from operating in the country after an investigation by the Consumer Fraud Agency found sex dolls resembling children on its platform in France. This has crossed a line, said France economy minister, and pledged to boot Shein from France if it didn't remove these products.

11:05In response, Shein put its tail between its legs and announced a complete ban on sex dolls on its platform. A spokesperson said, we are taking immediate corrective action and strengthening our internal mechanisms to prevent such a situation from happening again. This incident only poured gasoline on the fire already raging against Shein in France, whose politicians, unions and fashion leaders have railed against ultra cheap Chinese goods pouring into the market. An online petition against Shein's store opening on Wednesday has been signed by over 100 ,000 people. Fashion workers have staged protests and many brands have pulled their items from the department stores set to house Shein's new boutique.

11:41Toby, France's war against Shein has hit a new register, but it seems like plans to open the store are still on. Yeah, BHV is this department store. It's a department store for Parisians. It's not necessarily one that invites a lot of tourists. So it's a symbol of local pride, of Parisian craftsmanship. This is the home of hot couture fashion right here. So to have someone like Shein come into that place is just kind of a cultural inflection point for a lot of people. It's a pressure point for a lot of people. But the owner of BHV is not backing down whatsoever. He wants to open this store on Wednesday and has five more Shein Shop and Shops planned at different locations as well.

12:24The owner of SGM said on Instagram, business is real life. So he's basically betting that tons of people order from Shein and he thinks that it is going to outweigh the potential cons of, you know, just the cultural backlash by saying it's going to be good for business because a lot of people are going to come in and shop at this store. Kind of reminds me of the Cracker Barrel thing a little bit because this department store is, you know, it's been around for so long, but it's struggling. There aren't it's not getting as many visitors. So these owners are looking to shake things up. They want to get more young people into this store.

12:58So what are they doing? They're opening a Shein, which has been super popular. It's one of the fastest growing retailers anywhere in the world. So they're opening it up inside this department store to get new traffic. Obviously, that's been there's that's generated a huge backlash among French politicians and even large swaths of the public. But they did open this pop up store, the Shein pop up store during Paris Fashion Week back in September. And, you know, it was mobbed like there were so many people, so many young people that were influencers there. So there might this Shein store opening might expose this generational divide.

13:30Also in France, where you have a lot of folks who are saying this goes against everything we stand for in terms of environmentalism and craftsmanship and things like that. And then you have the other side where it's saying, actually, you are just social. You're just a very vocal minority. There are a ton of people who are getting priced out of a lot of goods and clothing, and they actually want to shop at Shein. So it's a very high risk bet that they're making. Yeah. And they're not exactly shying away from the controversy either. There is a giant billboard kind of hanging over the department store of the president of SGM, the real estate group who owns BHV, and the executive chairman of Shein, Donald Tang, standing next to each other and posing together.

14:10So it's not something that they're trying to just secretly or quietly put into this department store. It's definitely something where they're almost inviting controversy and saying like, hey, we are doing this. Come shop. If you don't like it, don't come shop. So there's so much cultural symbolism tied up into this move, as well as just the business case of saying it will probably increase foot traffic. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Toby's Trends.

14:37Marketing your brand these days probably feels harder than finding a good avocado at the grocery store at 5 p.m. So why not let Instacart handle both? They can be there for you when you place your grocery order and your grocery ads. Instacart built a one-stop shop for grocery retail media across more than 1 ,800 retail banners to help you reach all sorts of high-intent consumers. You can catch people right as they're scrolling through the aisles, which is exactly when they're ready to buy. Instacart's ad platform covers the entire shopping journey, and it's all backed by real-time optimization and closed-loop reporting.

15:10Keep your brand top of mind and top of the grocery list with Instacart. Hit the checkout with Instacart at ads.instacart.com. That's ads.instacart.com. What's the key to tapping into your ideal audience? First, it's knowing that with Disney Campaign Manager, your audience isn't just a segment, it's a fandom. Then it's about sending that fandom the right message at the right time. Actually, yes, that's exactly it. Reaching high value audiences at scale. And if you want to couple that with a massive reach, Disney campaign manager delivers advanced multi-layered audience reach by leveraging Disney select segments to reach fans and markets by geography, device, interest, content genres, and more.

15:53The platform blends automation with proactive human assistance. Yep, a real person will be helping you on the platform because human touch is important. With over 106 million monthly passionate and engaged viewers, this balance of huge reach and digital level precision is uniquely ownable. Brands don't just reach more people, they reach the right people at the right moments. Catch the early risers with content like Good Morning America or the crime sleuths with content like Only Murders in the Building and combine your reach with iconic content. Whatever you choose, the fandom world is your oyster.

16:27Get started at DisneyCampaignManager.com. That's DisneyCampaignManager.com. Welcome to Toby's Trends, the segment where I poke around the business world for a trend you should keep in your back pocket to impress a date. And today's trend is about companies trying again when it comes to AI ads. Coca-Cola is going back to the AI well to remake its iconic The Holidays Are Coming campaign that features a caravan of red trucks streaming through the snow. Last year, it employed AI to create something that got slammed for being more uncanny valley than compelling content. Think truck wheels that don't spin and less holiday charm than your dentist's But this year, they decided to run it back, hoping improvements in image-generating technology would lead to a better-received ad.

17:13Last year, people criticized the craftsmanship, the company's head of generative AI told The Hollywood Reporter. But this year, the craftsmanship is 10 times better. And they sort of pulled it off. This year's ad features a menagerie of critters, from polar bears to pandas, that replace any humans. And the truck's wheels do appear to actually be spinning. But there is still lots of industry backlash with one writer from The Verge calling it sloppy eyesore that feels dated compared to videos from OpenAI's Sora 2 or Google's VO3. However, the opinions of normal people do appear to be shifting, if only slightly, with just 46 % of customers saying they're not okay with AI in ads, down from 49 % last year.

17:55Neil, it feels like this Coca-Cola ad is turning into an annual temperature check, both on the technology's ability to actually pull off an ad for a major company and the public's attitude towards AI. This is not a small-scale experiment either for a smaller company. This is Coke we're talking about. This is one of the biggest global advertisers anywhere, and Coke is synonymous with the holidays. Coke essentially invented our perception of what Santa Claus is, of what modern Santa Claus is. So this is a huge swing that they're taking for the second straight year. Obviously, they looked at their own data and said that, well, again, maybe like going back to the last story with Sheehan saying there's a large vocal minority of critics online, but the actual numbers tell the tale that we are resonating with consumers.

18:41They looked at their benchmarks and said, hey, this was good. This, you know, people receive this well. And, you know, the animation was quite terrible. So if we can improve this, then I think we can only create a better ad. And there were also third parties that looked at that scored 2024 holidays ads. System One is a UK-based company. They looked at the effectiveness of this particular ad, and they said, yeah, it actually did resonate with consumers. So Coke is looking at all the data and saying this was a calculated bet that we took last year. You know, we got a lot of criticism, but actually it surpassed our expectations.

19:11And now we're going to go even bigger next time. Yeah, the bet is something that you often hear from companies that employ AI is that people don't care how the ad is actually made as well as long as it emotionally resonates. As long as people feel that holiday warmth spreading through their chest, they don't actually care who was behind the keyboard that was making the ad. Again, whether that's true or not maybe remains to be seen because it does look like there is significant backlash to companies that employ AI. But at least from an economics perspective, you can see why Coke is going down this particular rabbit hole.

19:45They say that the production time for a month for a ad generated with AI is one month versus the usual 12 months that it takes to put together a Coca-Cola campaign of this size. They said still around 100 people worked on the ad. I think this is them trying to say like, hey, we're not actually replacing jobs here. The same amount of people worked on the ad as they would have in the past. But now they have five AI specialists that generated and refined 70 ,000 video clips for one single ad. So I think they're trying to have their cake and eat it too here saying like, hey, we did it faster and cheaper.

20:18But we still actually use the same amount of people. But also we have five people who did most of the work here. So it's a little it's growing pains, obviously, as they're trying to navigate this PR campaign side of it as well. And I don't want to steal Toby's trends, but if I had to say a trend, it would be that more advertisers are going to be using AI in their commercials. This year, 30 percent of connected TV commercials, social videos and online videos were built or enhanced using generative AI tools, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. That's up from 22 % in 2024. And next year, that figure is expected to rise to 39 % in 2026.

20:54Just anecdotally speaking, I'm on YouTube a lot. So like ads are just being fed to me. I have seen a noticeable uptick of just smaller things, like 15 second ones. I just saw one for a hand warmer ad where it's clearly an AI generated content. But again, what you're seeing is this product makes your hand warmer. So I think you're about to see maybe a flood of these types of ads start to populate your feeds as they just become easier to produce and cheaper to produce as well. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. It was a day of the week that ends in Y, which meant OpenAI inked another major deal to satisfy its insatiable hunger for computing power.

21:31This time, the beneficiary was Amazon, the first time the two companies have done cloud business together. OpenAI pledged to spend$38 billion on cloud computing services from Amazon to help run its AI systems such as ChatGPT. Amazon's stock shot up 4 % on the day, a pattern we've seen with any company signing a partnership with OpenAI. But come on, Sam Altman, what is this? A deal for ants? $38 billion seems paltry compared to other recent OpenAI commitments, including spending$300 billion with Oracle and$250 billion with Microsoft. Still, the agreement with Amazon will spark even more debate about whether OpenAI's hugely expensive bet will pay off, given it's slated to bring in just$13 billion in revenue this year.

22:13$13 billion in revenue, and yet it has literally trillions of dollars in outlays. The thing that came to mind immediately upon seeing this deal was this exchange that Sam Altman had with an investor in OpenAI, Brad Gershner, on a podcast that he was with Satya Nadella. And basically, Brad Gerstner asked the question that everyone's been asking is, how can a company with$13 billion in revenues make$1.4 trillion of spend commitments? And everyone started to nitpick Sam Altman's response to this because it was weirdly confrontational and defensive saying, like, hey, Brad, if you don't want your shares, like, there's plenty of buyers out there where you kind of, like, change the subject.

22:50So it is an awkward kind of undercurrent here. What if OpenAI doesn't scale the revenue that it expects going forward? What happens to all these contracts? Is it just this circular AI economy that will collapse if one of the main players can't make good on all these contracts? So every time you start to see one of these announcements, you start to think in the back of your mind, all right, these bills are adding up. What's actually going to happen when they come due? So good, announce it. Stocks go up. Everybody's happy. But maybe eventually we'll be talking a year later saying this probably was a little bit of a frothy period in the market in general.

23:26All right, moving on. If you're rolling down the Las Vegas Strip in a pink limo for your bachelorette party, keep a vigilant eye out for any cyber trucks in your rearview mirror because Las Vegas just secured 10 of the Tesla behemoths to usher in, quote, the future of policing, according to a Clark County sheriff. Investor Ben Horowitz, who co-founded Andreessen Horowitz, and his wife Felicia donated 10 black and white cyber patrol vehicles to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. At the same press conference where the sheriff called the trucks the future of policing, he also said 400 officers had been trained to operate the vehicles, which have been updated with extended battery capacity, ladders, shields, and shotguns.