Pfizer’s Activist Investor Drama, How Your Social Media Can Impact Your Career, and Scott’s Guide to London

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1:23Welcome to the Prof. G. Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. Hey, Prof. G. Hey, Scott and team. Hey, Scott. Hi, Prof G. Hey, Prof G. Hey, Prof G. Hi, Professor G. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours at profgmedia.com. Again, that's officehours at profgmedia.com. So with that, first question. Hey, Prof G. This is Carrie from New York City, and I'm 54 years old. Thank you so much for all of the years of insights that I've gotten from your podcast.

1:57I'm calling today to ask if you have any commentary about the latest drama that's unfolding with Pfizer's investor activist and its former executives who were originally trying to help the activist and seems like are now not helping them. I don't imagine that this is normal, but I don't have any experience, so your insights would greatly help. I'm an investor advisor, and so I wanted to find out if you have any advice for me. And also, I'm greatly worried for my friends who work there. Do you have any advice for them? Thank you so much, and I would love to hear your prediction. Bye. So thanks very much for the question, Carrie.

2:42And I think it's nice that you would take the time to ask a question because you're worried about your friend. We covered this on Prop G Markets a couple weeks ago, but as a quick refresher, activist investor Starboard Capital has taken a$1 billion stake in Pfizer. The fund reportedly reached out to two former Pfizer executives, the former CEO Ian Reid and former CFO Frank D 'Amelio to support its agenda. However, things got a little twisted when Reid and D 'Amelio unexpectedly changed their stance and decided to back the current Pfizer CEO. There's real drama there. The drama escalated when Berla learned about Starboard's plan by accident.

3:17He received an incomplete email from D 'Amelio, which included a representative from Starboard cc'd to the email. That's how Borla found out that Starboard was preparing to announce its investment publicly at a conference. In terms of the numbers, Pfizer's stock has been cut in half since its record high in 2021, probably largely on the back of expectation around their vaccines. And it's flat this year, though it rose 3 % on the news of Starboard taking an activist investor stake. The stock has cratered as demand for its COVID vaccine and PaxLivit treatment have fallen faster than expected. By the way, I love both those things.

3:51Pfizer's revenue fell 10 % in net income, dropping almost 60 % in the first half. The company has announced cost-cutting campaigns that are expected to save$5.5 billion by 2027. So effectively, what's happened is they benefited from the sugar high of vaccines, and that's still probably a great long-term business, but the world wants GLP-1. Over the past three years, Pfizer and Moderna have declined 22 % and 81 % respectively, while Nova Nordisk and Eli Lilly have soared 163 % and 305%. And investors are sort of, what have you done for me lately? And lately needs to be GLP-1. And Pfizer tried to get into the GLP-1 industry and stubbed its toe.

4:30And quite frankly, it didn't work. It estimated the pill could have been a$10 billion product with a potential$90 billion market. and instead it just doesn't look like it's worked. Starbird is taken very seriously. They took a stake in Salesforce in 2022, urged the company to cut costs. The stock has done really well since then. They did the same thing at Starbucks. So look, they will probably give the CEO cloud cover to make some cost cuts. An activist probably like Starbird thinks, okay, if the guy gets his act together, the stock goes up, we go away, leave him alone. And if it continues to go down or sideways, ways.

5:05We get some seats on the board and come in and make some changes ourself. But I doubt that happens. Pfizer's a fantastic company. I would imagine they have good leadership, although I don't know much about this individual. I would bet he's going to make some cost cuts and that, I don't know, and that the stock probably recovers. That's not financial advice. But again, thanks for the question. Question number two. Hey, Scott, this is Reid from San Diego. I took your advice from an Office Hours episode around a year ago and started making TikToks on my interests in finance and economics. It's been a fantastic creative outlet for me, and the reception has been beyond my wildest expectations, so thank you for the inspiration.

5:44My question has to do with how young professionals should balance a social media presence with professionalism. I often make comparisons to relationships, substances, and sex in my videos. Can you tell I'm a fan of yours? but it seems to appeal to my demo of 18 to 26-year-old men in finance. While not super explicit, the jokes are definitely unprofessional. I know you go back and forth on the dilemma of being family-friendly, so if you were young today, how would you weigh the benefits and risks of making content and sharing your honest thoughts and jokes online? Thanks for all you do. This is a really interesting question.

6:23I get questions a lot from people saying, I admire how provocative you are, and I even notice sometimes when people on my podcast are more profane than they are elsewhere because I'm profane and they think it gives them cloud cover to be more profane. What I would say is I have the luxury and the privilege of being economically secure and having people who love me unconditionally. Not that you don't have people who love me unconditionally, but I can be profane. I can be vulgar. Quite frankly, I can fuck up. And on a risk-adjusted basis, being profane or vulgar in any professional situation on a risk-adjusted basis is just a bad idea because you might say something really inarticulate or really inelegant or just plain fucking stupid, and it can really hurt your career.

7:04I'm at a point right now, I actually have a strategic objective around my profanity and vulgarity. Well, two, one, it's authentic. I am generally a profane and vulgar person, and I think more people are than I like to admit. And two, I consider myself a proud progressive. And one of the things I do not like about the Democratic party is that we have become fucking humorless. And that is, everything's sensitive, all the sensitivity training, anything you say could offend people. Well, guess what? Part of getting to a point of equality is having the confidence and the affection for each other to make fun of our differences.

7:38One of the things I love about my partnership with Kara Swisher, who's actually coming over for coffee right now, is that I make fun of her sexuality and she makes fun of mine. I make fun of her height and she makes fun of my hair or absence thereof because we like each other. We're confident around each other. And I just don't like an environment where we've become so starched and so humorless that we are just too sensitive walking on eggshells around us. I think that kind of gave rise to Trump where he just came in and started being offensive and everyone was sort of ready for it. You need to be thoughtful at a young age about being profane and vulgar.

8:14And as it relates to social media, I know that several big firms, when they're hiring someone, check their social media. I can't get over the people who have jobs and are constantly posting images of themselves at Mykonos and Ibiza. It's like, if I was your boss, I hate to say this, I'd be like, do you make any time for work? So I think you have to be very thoughtful about the image you put out there because that is your interview before the interview. Now, if you're balancing that with being a creator, I think being authentic is one thing. But I think as a younger person, you want to match, you really want to be more about substance and heft and domain expertise and creativity and keep air on the side of being less profane and less vulgar than you would naturally.

8:56because the reality is, I don't want to say I can't be canceled, but if the advertisers flee from me or Vox finally gets fed up and kicks me to the curb, or I say something and people take it out of context and just run with it. And, you know, I lose, like I said, advertisers or my distribution agreements or some employees quit, I'm going to be fine. If that had happened to me 20 years ago, I would not have been fine. So before you have economic security, and I hate to say this, you have to be measured. And I don't think that's a good thing. I'm not saying that's the way the world should be, but that is the way the world is.

9:33We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.

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11:35Welcome back. Question number three. Prof G, this is Glenn from New Orleans. My girlfriend and I are late 30s, early 40s and are set to take a week-long vacation to London in mid-November. We're both divorced and we both have young children and we're leaving behind to go on this trip. We're really looking forward to this opportunity together as we've only been dating for a few months and we both love exploring cities. Do you have any recommendations for a newish couple with a good size expense budget to make the most of our time together? We're staying in Notting Hill and I've already put Granger & Co.

12:07restaurant on our list. Thanks so much for providing so much entertainment and insight across all your podcasts. Oh, Glenn, that's just so wonderful. And first off, this sounds passe, say, but go to AI, type in everything about you and what you want, what you just said to me and say, please, please arrange a seven day itinerary for us. And a bunch of that will not be relevant for you, but a bunch of it will. And it's fun. I'm not good at this because I'm a creature of habit, but I'll tell you a few things. I would go see that new ABBA kind of hologram 3D thing. I think that's really cool. I would.

12:43Oh, absolutely. A must. You got to go see a Premier League game. I hope you're in town for one, but I don't care if it's Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspurs, or my team, Arsenal. It is just so much fun. I would walk around Soho. In terms of pubs, I would specifically go to this one pub actually owned by Guy Ritchie called Lore of the Land for their Sunday roast. I took my son, who just turned 17, for his first kind of legal beer, and I like to do it every week. I just think it was so nice. And my son, I get these monosyllabic answers from him. But when he has a beer, this probably sounds weird, he kind of opens up, which I love.

13:20I would go do a great tea service at a fancy hotel like the Barkley or the Connit. I think that is a ton of fun or very British, if you will. I would do a night out at Soho Farmhouse in the Cotswolds. When I moved to New York and people said we have beautiful beaches here, I never believed them because I thought, well, I'm from California. And the beaches in the Hamptons are beautiful. And people told me, oh, the countryside, the British countryside is beautiful. I didn't believe it when I went out there. It's incredible. And Soho Farmhouse is just spectacular. And if also along the same lines, Maison Estelle has a sister property out in the Cotswolds called Estelle Manor, which is just like Downton Abbey rehabbed with a bunch of money by people with better taste than the Abbeys or whoever they were that operated Downton Abbey.

14:05Anyways, great restaurants. Also, just pick a neighborhood and just absolutely just walk around. I think it's fun to go to Selfridges and have dim sum there. I love those high-end malls that my kids, for whatever reason, love. I think Westfields is kind of, what am I telling you to go to malls? Maybe you don't have kids. Maybe you don't need to do this. But anyways, Glenn from New Orleans, you're going to have a fantastic time. Sorry I wasn't more help there. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehours at prof2media.com. Again, that's officehours at prof2media.com.

14:47This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Caroline Shagrin, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod and the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Prop G Markets Pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.