QAV #647 – The BRHG

QAV 647 THE BRHG

[00:00:00] Cameron: Well, well, well, well, welcome back to QAV. This episode is now, it was gonna be entitled Whiplash ’cause that’s what my week has been like, but I’ve just changed it to the BRHG.

[00:00:13] Cameron: That’s the, uh, , that’s the title for this episode, but it’ll remain, remain our Secret. No one will

[00:00:20] Cameron: know what the BRHG stands for.

[00:00:23] Tony: ha. Ha,

[00:00:25] Tony: except for

[00:00:25] Tony: a couple of guys from Brisbane and me.

[00:00:26] Cameron: how’s your week been,

[00:00:27] Cameron: Tony?

[00:00:28] Tony: Yeah.

[00:00:28] Tony: busy. Busy,

[00:00:29] Tony: busy. Well, coming into Christmas

[00:00:31] Tony: and, you know, we’re going up to Brisbane on the weekend for a

[00:00:34] Tony: party and

[00:00:35] Tony: then I’m heading off to Melbourne

[00:00:36] Tony: after that.

[00:00:37] Tony: So, trying to get all the loose

[00:00:39] Tony: ends

[00:00:39] Tony: tied up in between.

[00:00:40] Cameron: Well, it has been a

[00:00:42] Cameron: crazy week, Tony, on the, uh, in the stock markets here and in the US. We’ll talk a little bit about that in after hours, what’s happened over there the last few days. But I wanted to start off with a story I read in the ABC this morning. I don’t know if you saw this. It wasn’t in my notes to you because I read it afterwards by

[00:00:58] Cameron: Ian [00:01:00] Verrender.

[00:01:00] Cameron: The Uncomfortable Truth

[00:01:01] Cameron: About Record High Immigration Levels, Rants, Rents, Not Rants, Rents and

[00:01:07] Cameron: Inflation. Did you see

[00:01:08] Cameron: this

[00:01:08] Cameron: article?

[00:01:09] Tony: I, I haven’t, but I can pretty much guess what it’s

[00:01:11] Tony: gonna say.

[00:01:14] Cameron: Well, let me read the beginning of it. You could call them the four

[00:01:17] Cameron: eyes of the economy. And they’ve now collided in spectacular fashion. Almost all of us have been obsessed by just two. Inflation and its impact on interest rates. But there are another two that need to be brought into the equation, immigration and the need for infrastructure.

[00:01:35] Cameron: Every economist from Reserve Bank Governor Michelle Bullock Down admits that interest rates are a blunt weapon that disproportionately affects

[00:01:42] Cameron: different segments of Australian society, particularly younger Australians who bought real

[00:01:47] Cameron: estate in the past three years. What about the

[00:01:49] Cameron: younger Australians

[00:01:50] Cameron: who can’t afford to buy

[00:01:51] Cameron: real estate?

[00:01:51] Cameron: That’s what I want to know. Or even the

[00:01:53] Cameron: Older

[00:01:53] Tony: Older Australians.

[00:01:54] Cameron: 50s, they can’t afford to buy anything. But for a larger number of, a large

[00:01:59] Cameron: number of [00:02:00] economists, it is the only weapon. Many refuse to even consider

[00:02:02] Cameron: alternatives, primarily because they shy away from a

[00:02:06] Cameron: debate that has become socially and occasionally racially

[00:02:09] Cameron: charged. And yet they’re

[00:02:11] Cameron: often more than happy to continue to push for ever higher interest rates. In the past fortnight,

[00:02:16] Cameron: inflation pressures eased substantially in both the United States

[00:02:20] Cameron: and the United Kingdom. While it is

[00:02:22] Cameron: declining here, it is at a much slower pace than the RBA would

[00:02:26] Cameron: like, which forced it to raise rates on Melbourne Cup Day. That’s provided ammo to the Hawks, who have bolstered their calls for even more rate hikes. And last week the federal government announced it would take a scythe to infrastructure spending in a bid to relieve inflation pressures following prompts from the International Monetary Fund.

[00:02:46] Cameron: And then he goes on to roast the IMF.

[00:02:49] Cameron: Um, and, uh, yeah, and yet, despite the overwhelming evidence, few appear willing to confront one of the key

[00:02:56] Cameron: forces driving inflation. Rather than

[00:02:58] Cameron: whack everyone with higher [00:03:00] interest rates

[00:03:00] Cameron: because rents are going crazy, wouldn’t it make more sense to simply

[00:03:04] Cameron: scale back the level of

[00:03:05] Cameron: immigration, even temporarily, to take the pressure off rents and help lower

[00:03:10] Cameron: inflation?

[00:03:11] Cameron: He was talking about… 000 people

[00:03:14] Cameron: arriving in Australia and

[00:03:16] Cameron: every couple of

[00:03:17] Cameron: years that’s the population of Brisbane and they all need a place to live, etc, etc.

[00:03:22] Cameron: Anyway, I thought, uh, Ian’s been listening to the show,

[00:03:25] Cameron: he’s joining your rant against the

[00:03:27] Cameron: RBA.

[00:03:29] Tony: Well,

[00:03:30] Cameron: your thoughts on,

[00:03:31] Tony: fiscal

[00:03:31] Tony: policy as well. It’s like, we spoke about this at length last time. Um, yeah. Immigration is definitely inflationary under its current setting. It’s, um, you know, to be fair to the government, it’s a bit of a catch up period because COVID years and. Businesses were crying out for more

[00:03:49] Tony: staff and immigration was seen to be deflationary.

[00:03:55] Tony: Going into this period, because, um, if you have more, [00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Tony: a bigger

[00:04:00] Tony: pool of backpackers and overseas students, et cetera, doing jobs and your cafe stays open and the wages are lower and all the rest of it. So um, it just hasn’t turned out that way because

[00:04:10] Tony: those. Perhaps they brought in too many, but those five or six hundred thousand

[00:04:15] Tony: people this year are looking for places to rent or buy.

[00:04:18] Tony: Um, and you know, they’re coming in with money in their pockets and they’re buying up. So it is, has been inflationary. But again, it’s this whole thing about the left hand and the right hand don’t have a, something in between to, to, to balance this idea of I’ve got to whack inflation with interest rates.

[00:04:37] Tony: And I’ve got to do something about various problems in the economy by immigration or whatever else, building, uh, investing more in infrastructure and, which is inflationary. So it’s like this vicious cycle that fiscal and monetary policy are dancing to at the moment and just need someone to stop it really. Should be the treasurer. Um, I think he’s now cottoning on,

[00:04:59] Tony: [00:05:00] hopefully,

[00:05:00] Tony: we’ll see.

[00:05:02] Cameron: well, speaking about,

[00:05:04] Cameron: uh, disasters, Tony,

[00:05:08] Cameron: Karoon Energy.

[00:05:10] Tony: Yeah.

[00:05:11] Cameron: my god, I mean,

[00:05:15] Tony: By the way, I don’t think it’ll

[00:05:16] Tony: be a

[00:05:16] Tony: disaster. It’s it’s. It’s gone down because of a

[00:05:19] Tony: capital

[00:05:19] Tony: raise, but maybe, sorry, I shouldn’t

[00:05:21] Tony: interrupt, you outline why you think it’s a

[00:05:22] Tony: disaster.

[00:05:24] Cameron: that was a disaster for those of us that held the

[00:05:26] Cameron: shares, uh, when it collapsed last week. So, for those people who didn’t hold KAR on the 15th of November, you know, some point in the middle of last week, the share price suddenly dropped by 20%. In the morning, and, uh, we went, oh my god, went to sell it. There was no news, nothing, just dropped, 3 million shares, uh, traded hands, or 3 million dollars worth of shares, I can’t remember which, in the morning.

[00:05:58] Cameron: And then, but, we all put in our [00:06:00] sell orders and then found out that there was a trading halt. I think it was like 9. 30 in the morning, there was a trading halt placed. Uh, well, 9. 30 my time, so I guess 10. 30 Sydney time. And so we, our sell orders expired, cause there were, you know, market day trades. Uh, later on in that day, we found out that they had announced, uh, capital raising.

[00:06:26] Cameron: But, uh, the shares had plummeted before that announcement came out, and there was a trading halt. So somebody knew what was coming. And the capital raising was at a much lower price to where the shares were trading at. So, somebody’s dumped 3 million shares.

[00:06:44] Cameron: in the morning before the

[00:06:46] Cameron: trading

[00:06:46] Cameron: halt was announced.

[00:06:47] Cameron: Now,

[00:06:49] Cameron: I

[00:06:49] Cameron: don’t know

[00:06:49] Cameron: how they get away with

[00:06:50] Cameron: that. What’s

[00:06:51] Cameron: going on

[00:06:51] Tony: I agree. Yeah, you think there’d be some, some kind of, um, review of that by the ASX and by perhaps other regulators and [00:07:00] potential class

[00:07:00] Tony: action activity too.

[00:07:02] Cameron: you would hope So So anyway, then they came out of the trading halt a couple of days later on Friday, the shares immediately dropped another 4%. So by the time we got around to selling our shares, we’d all lost 20, 25%,

[00:07:16] Cameron: depending on where you bought in, I guess, where

[00:07:18] Cameron: you were at when you bought it. But it was A real one sell for me.

[00:07:22] Cameron: And

[00:07:22] Cameron: you know, I ended up selling it for A lot

[00:07:24] Cameron: less than my 10%.

[00:07:26] Tony: Really? Because the, because the

[00:07:27] Tony: graph you sent me shows it’s down 10%.

[00:07:31] Cameron: now, Yeah.

[00:07:33] Tony: Oh, so it’s, it’s gone up

[00:07:34] Tony: again. Has it since

[00:07:35] Cameron: it’s gone up a little

[00:07:36] Cameron: bit since, yeah, since it came out of the trading hold, yeah. Um, so then on the, uh, yesterday I got an email from Australian Super saying that I was eligible to, uh, take place in this new capital raising. Shareholders are to buy an additional one shares for every 3. 75 held on.

[00:07:58] Cameron: Record date at a [00:08:00] price of 2. 05. The record date is the 20th of November, but of course I’d already sold my shares by then. I was like, when I saw an email from them about it, I was like, Oh, they’re going to make it right. They’re going to go, look, sorry, sorry, we mishandled this. And you know, the share price dropped before you had a chance to find out the news, let’s, let’s make it up to you.

[00:08:23] Cameron: We’ll just, we’ll, we’ll give you your money back. No, just, uh, dropping. It was like. Insult, adding insult to injury there. You can buy shares at a much lower price of the company that where you just lost 20%. Dave from Newey emailed me yesterday saying shareholders can apply for a 1 per 3. 75 blah de blah.

[00:08:44] Cameron: If a holder assumes they get full allocation and do the calcs, could or should they be working with a new rule one price based on the new buy price post issuing the new shares? So assuming you didn’t get out, I guess, last week.

[00:08:59] Cameron: [00:09:00] Um, do you re you would recalculate your Rule 1 price based on

[00:09:03] Cameron: the average price of the full parcel if you took

[00:09:07] Cameron: if you participated in the the new

[00:09:09] Cameron: offer?

[00:09:09] Tony: Yeah,

[00:09:10] Tony: I would. Yeah,

[00:09:11] Cameron: tell them to

[00:09:11] Cameron: go screw themselves, Dave, and just, uh,

[00:09:14] Cameron: after

[00:09:14] Cameron: that, debacle.

[00:09:15] Tony: real cowboy action, isn’t it? That someone’s found out about

[00:09:18] Tony: the rights issue beforehand and they’ve sold massive amounts of shares on that, Whether there was a press release lying around somewhere that someone’s seen, I don’t know,

[00:09:26] Tony: but that’s bad.

[00:09:28] Cameron: Really

[00:09:29] Tony: would have dropped, the share

[00:09:30] Tony: price would have dropped anyway to be, reflect the fact that there was a

[00:09:33] Tony: rights issue

[00:09:35] Cameron: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:09:38] Tony: Um,

[00:09:39] Cameron: I don’t know. I mean, that, but you know,

[00:09:41] Cameron: that’s not, that’s not nice to your shareholders. Here we go. It

[00:09:45] Cameron: was 11 point

[00:09:48] Cameron: on, oh, that’s on the 17th. Yeah. On the 15th, 2 million shares traded hands, 2 point something. Um, no, 3. 4 million shares traded hands on [00:10:00] the 15th before it went to the trading hall.

[00:10:02] Cameron: And then when it came out of the trading hall, um, 18 million shares,

[00:10:08] Cameron: uh, traded hands. But I

[00:10:10] Cameron: like. Yeah, to, uh, to just take the share price like that

[00:10:14] Cameron: doesn’t give me a lot of faith in the

[00:10:16] Cameron: management of the company.

[00:10:18] Tony: bad management, isn’t it?

[00:10:20] Cameron: Wahoo!

[00:10:22] Tony: um, the governance is very poor. I agree. Putting that aside, it looks like a good deal. I’ve got to say so.

[00:10:30] Tony: If you hadn’t sold your shares, if you hadn’t sold your shares, or if you were the company that sold, or some individual that sold that big parcel before the announcement,

[00:10:39] Tony: you can buy back in cheaper. But, um, yeah, so Karoon is, um, is raising money to buy a US oil and gas field. And, um, a brief summary, it’s it’s, um, Predicting that revenue will increase by 51%, that, uh, earnings [00:11:00] will, uh, increase by 80%, um, and the costs per barrel goes down from 15 U. S. to 13 U. S. Um, additionally, it’s diversifying away from Brazil, so currently it’s, it only owns oil fields in Brazil, um, so it’s going to have 30 percent in the U.

[00:11:17] Tony: S. 70 percent in Brazil and the US acquisition also adds some gas to the product mix. So it’s not just going to be a straight oil company. Um, design the standard, the rights are being offered at 2 and 5 cents a share and the share price is above that now. So if you do take up the offer at this stage, you’re making a profit, the

[00:11:37] Tony: basis of those

[00:11:38] Tony: shares.

[00:11:38] Tony: Awesome.

[00:11:41] Cameron: So, okay, if,

[00:11:44] Cameron: um, you Karoon

[00:11:47] Cameron: Energy shares and went through that, would you have sold them when

[00:11:52] Cameron: they came out of the…

[00:11:54] Tony: Possibly. I don’t know. I’d have to have a look. I don’t, I’m not familiar

[00:11:57] Tony: with Karoon to know

[00:11:59] Tony: when when,

[00:11:59] Tony: [00:12:00] they came out of the trading halt, were you aware of the share placement at

[00:12:03] Tony: that stage? they would have probably made an announcement about what they were doing

[00:12:08] Tony: and then take it, took it out of a trading halt.

[00:12:10] Tony: Yeah. Or was, I

[00:12:11] Tony: don’t know what the sequence of

[00:12:12] Tony: events were.

[00:12:13] Cameron: Umm, not the offer. I got,

[00:12:16] Cameron: I got the email about

[00:12:17] Cameron: the

[00:12:18] Cameron: offer yesterday. Trading hulk came off

[00:12:20] Cameron: on

[00:12:20] Cameron: Friday.

[00:12:22] Tony: Okay. So then, yeah, I don’t know. Possibly. Yeah.

[00:12:28] Cameron: Well, I was not

[00:12:30] Cameron: happy about that whole

[00:12:31] Cameron: thing,

[00:12:31] Tony: No,

[00:12:32] Tony: I don’t blame you.

[00:12:33] Tony: That’s poorly managed.

[00:12:34] Cameron: you did a Paul Pork on them,

[00:12:36] Cameron: I

[00:12:36] Tony: I did. I did. So it was a car crash of a pulled pork. A K. A. R. crash of a

[00:12:45] Tony: pulled pork.

[00:12:48] Cameron: Yeah. Oh, well, there you go. It wasn’t, that wasn’t… speaking of unhappy

[00:12:53] Cameron: events.. National Tire, NTD.

[00:12:57] Cameron: Like, I think the day after, or the same day, [00:13:00] well it was right about the same time, dropped 16 percent in a

[00:13:04] Cameron: day

[00:13:05] Cameron: after news came out that Goodyear was dropping Dunlop, or was doing a strategic review of their ownership of

[00:13:13] Cameron: Dunlop,

[00:13:14] Cameron: which confused the hell out of me, because I thought Goodyear was

[00:13:17] Cameron: Dunlop, and I’m like, what?

[00:13:19] Cameron: How can you do a strategic

[00:13:20] Cameron: review of yourself?

[00:13:22] Cameron: Um, but, uh, apparently

[00:13:23] Tony: you

[00:13:24] Tony: can.

[00:13:25] Cameron: That’s true, I

[00:13:26] Cameron: guess,

[00:13:26] Cameron: yeah. Apparently Goodyear

[00:13:29] Cameron: are gonna try and offload

[00:13:31] Cameron: Dunlop and NTT.

[00:13:37] Cameron: Their whole business is based on selling Goodyear and Dunlop tyres by the

[00:13:41] Cameron: sounds of it. And their share price

[00:13:43] Cameron: tanked.

[00:13:44] Tony: I’m not sure it’s their, I’m not sure it’s their whole business,

[00:13:46] Tony: but certainly a bit of it is, yeah.

[00:13:48] Cameron: Big chunk of their business. Yeah. Um, they, they’d all, their most recent sort of annual meeting, they said the distribution of Dunlop brand tires by NTD in New Zealand commenced on [00:14:00] 1st of November, 2023. Preparatory work for the commencement of NDT’s,

[00:14:04] Cameron: NTD’s distribution of Dunlop brand tires in Australia

[00:14:08] Cameron: from March, April 2024 is

[00:14:10] Cameron: continuing.

[00:14:12] Cameron: Uh, not anymore, it’s

[00:14:13] Cameron: not.

[00:14:15] Tony: Yeah, so that, so, um, what I found when I was digging around

[00:14:18] Tony: was, as you say, Goodyear is

[00:14:20] Tony: the company, the US owned company, makes Goodyear tyres, but

[00:14:23] Tony: it also owns other brands like Dunlop, which is the brand of tyres it sells in Australia, and they’re putting that brand up for sale, and they’ve laid off 700 staff in Australia that manufacture Dunlop tyres here.

[00:14:36] Tony: Um, Goodyear’s on the ropes. The parent company and they’re trying to find two billion dollars in cost savings per per year. So it’s seeing this as a way of helping to achieve that. Um, so it’s putting it up for sale. The this was from an article I read on The carsales. com website, interestingly enough. Um, but they’re, they’re suggesting that there are other tyre manufacturers looking at, uh, [00:15:00] potentially buying out the Dunlop brand from Goodyear.

[00:15:03] Tony: But what’s happened, um, as you said, was that, I guess, when Goodyear was, you know, trying to save costs, they, they ran a chain of tyre stores in Australia, which they were also offloading, so… National Tire NTD picked up some of those, um, which is what you were talking about, preparing to take over that outlet.

[00:15:23] Tony: Um, it’s unclear what, what that means, uh, both for those outlets and for their tire supply. Because the brand could be bought by any of the other tire manufacturers, including some from China, who may just not want to even sell in Australia going forward.

[00:15:38] Tony: So, or they might decide to honour the Goodyear deals.

[00:15:42] Tony: NTD just

[00:15:43] Tony: doesn’t know what’s going to happen. So it’s, it’s uncertainty, which

[00:15:46] Tony: has driven the share

[00:15:47] Tony: price down.

[00:15:49] Cameron: Well, we’re on really good terms with China now,

[00:15:50] Cameron: Tony. I don’t know if you heard that, but, uh,

[00:15:52] Cameron: Albo went over, shook hands with

[00:15:55] Cameron: Xi. It’s all good. So, you know, all no harm, no

[00:15:59] Cameron: foul. [00:16:00] It’s all water under the bridge now. We’re all friends with the

[00:16:01] Cameron: Chinese again.

[00:16:03] Tony: What do they call him? A pretty little boy or

[00:16:04] Tony: something, wasn’t it?

[00:16:06] Tony: Is that the

[00:16:06] Tony: headline?

[00:16:08] Cameron: Something

[00:16:08] Tony: When he wore his Matilda’s

[00:16:09] Tony: outfit?

[00:16:10] Tony: Anyway, you Shanghai?

[00:16:11] Tony: Yeah.

[00:16:13] Cameron: I did some drilling down cause I know nothing about, surprisingly, uh, I know nothing about car tires. I, I,

[00:16:22] Cameron: changed one recently. That’s about my full interaction with car tires.

[00:16:28] Cameron: Did I tell you about that? We were going to Kung Fu one day. We’re heading off to Kung Fu and narrow street at the front of our house and there was a car coming the opposite direction and cars parked on the sidewalk and up on the curb, you know, so I quickly sort of…

[00:16:43] Cameron: Pulled into the kerb in between two cars to let this other car come past and hit a drain that was there that I didn’t see. Popped my tire. So that’s what I get for being nice, trying to let the other people through. So Goodyear, [00:17:00] Goodyear Rubber and Tire Company, founded in 1898 by Frank Siebeling. Named after American Charles Goodyear, 1800 1860, inventor of vulcanized rubber.

[00:17:18] Cameron: So Charles Goodyear didn’t actually start Goodyear. He was dead. He’d been dead for 38 years when this other guy started. So that’s the first. Interesting thing is that Goodyear had nothing to do with it. The guy himself. Um, they start making bicycle tires, bicycle and carriage tires originally, and poker chips.

[00:17:40] Cameron: And then, uh, 1901, they started supplying Henry Ford with racing tires

[00:17:46] Cameron: and it goes from there. Um,

[00:17:49] Cameron: 1924.

[00:17:53] Cameron: Wonder how that worked out. Uh,

[00:17:55] Cameron: Dunlop

[00:17:56] Tony: Oh, the humanity. [00:18:00]

[00:18:01] Cameron: Dunlop

[00:18:02] Cameron: Tyres was founded by a Scotsman, John Boyd Dunlop. He was actually in Dublin at the time in 1888. But, um, interestingly enough, he was actually a, he was a vet, a veterinary surgeon,

[00:18:18] Tony: Ooh,

[00:18:19] Cameron: was familiar with making rubber

[00:18:20] Cameron: devices. And made some pneumatic tires for his child’s tricycle. And then went on from there to develop them for use in cycle racing.

[00:18:32] Cameron: Formed a company with the president of the Irish Cyclists Association, Harvey de Croz, and then a couple of years later, he was like, eh, you know what? I’m going to go back to being a vet. Sold all of his shares in 1896.

[00:18:46] Tony: wow.

[00:18:47] Cameron: And, uh, lived until 1921, but yeah, had nothing to do with Dunlop the company. After that,

[00:18:54] Cameron: he got out of it.

[00:18:55] Cameron: Ah, this tire

[00:18:56] Cameron: thing, bicycles,

[00:18:58] Cameron: tires, that’s never going to go [00:19:00] anywhere. He

[00:19:01] Cameron: got out of it, quit, pulled the pin.

[00:19:05] Tony: So both Dunlop and Goodyear

[00:19:06] Tony: are named, are not named after their founders. They’re

[00:19:08] Tony: named after the

[00:19:09] Tony: inventors.

[00:19:11] Cameron: Yes. Well, Dunlop was a founder, but he didn’t, didn’t stick around very long. Pulled out.

[00:19:17] Tony: Okay.

[00:19:18] Cameron: And then of course, Pacific Dunlop,

[00:19:21] Cameron: uh, which we remember from the eighties,

[00:19:24] Cameron: who was the guy that took

[00:19:25] Cameron: over Pacific

[00:19:26] Cameron: Dunlop?

[00:19:27] Cameron: It was like

[00:19:28] Tony: I can’t recall his name. Oh, you mean

[00:19:30] Tony: Al Dunlap?

[00:19:31] Cameron: no, Al Dunlap didn‘t go there. He

[00:19:34] Cameron: worked for Kerry, didn’t he? When he

[00:19:35] Cameron: was

[00:19:35] Cameron: here.

[00:19:36] Tony: Oh Packer,

[00:19:36] Tony: that’s right. Yeah.

[00:19:38] Tony: You’re right.

[00:19:39] Cameron: There was some, one of the big

[00:19:40] Cameron: Australian personalities in the eighties

[00:19:43] Cameron: was running Pacific Dunlop for a while, I think. I can’t

[00:19:45] Cameron: remember who it

[00:19:45] Cameron: is now,

[00:19:47] Tony: And it

[00:19:47] Cameron: of course they

[00:19:47] Cameron: were, yeah.

[00:19:49] Cameron: Broken up,

[00:19:50] Cameron: uh, and they’ve been changed the name to

[00:19:52] Cameron: Ansell eventually, but they, Cochlear came out of Pacific Dunlop. I think, I remember when I was at, [00:20:00] you know,

[00:20:00] Cameron: Microsoft, I think Pacific Dunlop was still around, was one of our clients back

[00:20:04] Cameron: then, but then they became Pacific Brands at some stage.

[00:20:07] Cameron: I think

[00:20:07] Cameron: they had a couple of traumatic years at

[00:20:10] Cameron: some

[00:20:11] Cameron: point, but

[00:20:11] Tony: One part of them would have, I don’t know if they did, probably Pacific Brands was the clothing

[00:20:15] Tony: company.

[00:20:17] Cameron: right,

[00:20:17] Tony: That really, really was always up against it trying to manufacture clothes in

[00:20:21] Tony: Australia.

[00:20:23] Cameron: right. Um, CEO, 1980s, here we go, who is the CEO, 1980s, Rod Chadwick,

[00:20:31] Cameron: that was in the nineties. He’s not the guy I’m

[00:20:34] Cameron: thinking of.

[00:20:36] Cameron: There was some big personality

[00:20:38] Cameron: dude in the 1980s. Phil Bross.

[00:20:42] Tony: That’s the person I was

[00:20:42] Tony: thinking

[00:20:43] Tony: of.

[00:20:43] Cameron: Bill Brass, Yeah.

[00:20:46] Cameron: Anyway, there you go. So

[00:20:48] Cameron: Dunlop,

[00:20:50] Cameron: not again, not good for the shareholders. Had nothing to do with it.

[00:20:54] Cameron: Not out of NTD’s control, I guess, but it dropped another 8 percent this [00:21:00] morning. It has gone back up a little bit. I think it’s only down 3 percent as of the moment, but I got out last week when it dropped. So last week, out of the blue,

[00:21:10] Cameron: two of our shares dropped

[00:21:12] Cameron: by… Double digits in a matter of hours. It was

[00:21:16] Cameron: kind of, kind of crazy,

[00:21:18] Cameron: man.

[00:21:20] Tony: And they were both pulled. No, NTD wasn’t a pulled

[00:21:22] Tony: pork, I don’t think.

[00:21:24] Cameron: No, no, yeah,

[00:21:26] Cameron: no, I looked it up. No, I

[00:21:28] Cameron: looked it up. I thought you would

[00:21:29] Cameron: have,

[00:21:29] Cameron: but you haven’t. Then oil became a sell also on Friday. Briefly, I had to sell

[00:21:34] Cameron: some oil stocks and then it turned around

[00:21:37] Cameron: the next day. I went back to being a

[00:21:39] Cameron: Josephine on Monday.

[00:21:43] Cameron: Uh.

[00:21:44] Cameron: Well, you

[00:21:45] Tony: I looked at it too. But, um, didn’t look at it until

[00:21:48] Tony: Monday.

[00:21:48] Tony: when it was just touching its sell line.

[00:21:51] Cameron: right. So it’s been

[00:21:54] Tony: think you’re

[00:21:54] Tony: jumping on these things too quickly? Do you think you’re jumping on these things too quickly? Do

[00:21:58] Tony: you want to, like, I normally wait [00:22:00] for end of day and look at

[00:22:00] Tony: it after hours and look at it next day,

[00:22:04] Tony: see

[00:22:04] Tony: if it turns around.

[00:22:06] Cameron: Well, yeah, but then they drop 25 percent in a day

[00:22:10] Cameron: sometimes,

[00:22:11] Tony: they could. You’re right. Mm

[00:22:13] Cameron: know, I did my, I did my analysis. I think we talked about it last week. I did my

[00:22:17] Cameron: 18 month analysis on light and, you know, figured out the cells.

[00:22:22] Cameron: Didn’t gain me anything, but didn’t cost me anything either. It was sort of a neutral

[00:22:26] Cameron: exercise.

[00:22:27] Tony: It’s insurance, isn’t it, that they don’t go down

[00:22:29] Tony: further?

[00:22:30] Cameron: Yeah. And look, my general rule is I

[00:22:34] Cameron: just, I just follow the rules. I’m not, you know, I don’t, I don’t look at things all day. If I notice something in the morning, I evaluate my, my

[00:22:42] Cameron: cell triggers in the morning. Um, I’ll look, if I have to sell something, I’ll sell it. If something happens later on in the day, I normally won’t

[00:22:50] Cameron: worry about it until

[00:22:51] Cameron: the next

[00:22:52] Cameron: morning,

[00:22:53] Cameron: just because I’ve got other

[00:22:54] Cameron: stuff I’m doing. I’m I’m not going to stop my workflow to, you know,[00:23:00]

[00:23:00] Cameron: trigger

[00:23:00] Cameron: finger,

[00:23:02] Cameron: trade something,

[00:23:04] Tony: So sorry, so how do you, um, take oil, for

[00:23:07] Tony: example, how do you find out that

[00:23:09] Tony: oil

[00:23:09] Tony: becomes a

[00:23:09] Tony: sell?

[00:23:12] Cameron: looked at the oil chart. I had read in the morning news that oil prices had come down overnight.

[00:23:18] Cameron: So I just thought I knew it was

[00:23:20] Cameron: close. Um, so I just pulled up the oil chart thought. Yeah, that’s definitely below the three point trend

[00:23:26] Cameron: line.

[00:23:27] Cameron: And so sold, um, horizon

[00:23:31] Cameron: and uh, what else was it? Horizon

[00:23:34] Cameron: and VEA

[00:23:36] Cameron: fever energy.

[00:23:38] Tony: Mm hmm.

[00:23:39] Cameron: And then the bastard turned around the next day.

[00:23:40] Cameron: But you know how long it’ll stay?

[00:23:43] Cameron: Uh, not a cell. I don’t know. It could

[00:23:44] Cameron: be a cell again.

[00:23:46] Tony: Yep, absolutely. And I do it the same way,

[00:23:49] Tony: like I’ve had the same process,

[00:23:51] Tony: I heard that oil was dropping and I’ve checked

[00:23:53] Tony: it and I’ll, I just

[00:23:55] Tony: diarise it every day to check it now for a

[00:23:58] Tony: week until it

[00:23:58] Tony: goes one way or the

[00:23:59] Tony: other.[00:24:00]

[00:24:00] Cameron: Right. So I wanted to ask you, there was a bit of a chat in the QAV forum

[00:24:05] Cameron: about Beach

[00:24:07] Cameron: BPT on the

[00:24:08] Cameron: day, on Friday. A few of us were going backwards and forwards trying to work out whether or not it should

[00:24:13] Cameron: be an oil sell, because its revenues are made up of oil and LPG or LNG. Um,

[00:24:20] Cameron: LNG is a

[00:24:21] Cameron: buy, oil was a

[00:24:23] Cameron: sell.

[00:24:24] Cameron: Had a look at their chart, as far as I could

[00:24:27] Cameron: tell, about 37%, which is what I had in

[00:24:30] Cameron: my,

[00:24:31] Cameron: Table. Anyway, it’s about 60, 40 LNG to oil. Is that how you read

[00:24:36] Cameron: that little

[00:24:36] Cameron: chart? I

[00:24:37] Cameron: pulled out of their review and you’re,

[00:24:40] Tony: I do read it that way. I think, um,

[00:24:42] Tony: it’s, you know, it depends how far you want to drill down on this, but it’s gas and there’s different types of gas, I think, in this mix. Um, but I’m comfortable calling it 60 40 gas to oil. LNG to oil, even though it’s not all LNG to be fair,

[00:24:56] Tony: there’s LPG in there and there’s other condensates in

[00:24:59] Tony: [00:25:00] there as well.

[00:25:01] Cameron: I still, I don’t remember the difference. What’s LPG versus

[00:25:05] Cameron: LNG,

[00:25:05] Tony: Uh, as part of the distillation, from memory,

[00:25:09] Tony: I don’t know if it’s distillation process, uh, pressurization process for gas, there’s,

[00:25:14] Tony: um, LNG, You know, you, you cool and pressurize to a certain level and that gets used for certain things, but there are other condensates that have different, um, freezing points and, uh, you are used for different things.

[00:25:31] Tony: So, um, LPG goes into your. Your gas bottles to power your barbecue, LNG powers, um, electricity generators and, um, large stations, uh, large, uh, electricity generators, for example. Um, and then you have other condensates, which are different types of gas again, which have different uses. So it’s, it’s a bit like, it’s not the same process, but it’s a bit like a

[00:25:56] Tony: barrel of oil where you

[00:25:56] Tony: have diesel and you have different

[00:25:58] Tony: grades of fuel.

[00:25:59] Cameron: but [00:26:00] they’re all gas. We classify them all

[00:26:02] Cameron: as

[00:26:03] Tony: I would, but, but they have different

[00:26:05] Tony: prices and different price charts.

[00:26:08] Tony: Yeah. and according to the chart you sent

[00:26:10] Tony: me, um, 25 percent of Beecher’s revenue is on fixed prices anyway, so it’s not going to relate to a chart, it’s just we’ve agreed to sell it for

[00:26:19] Tony: this

[00:26:19] Tony: price.

[00:26:21] Cameron: Yeah. Right. That’s the East Coast Gas.

[00:26:26] Tony: Mm hmm.

[00:26:27] Cameron: anyway, there, so I didn’t sell BPT, which as it turns out was probably a

[00:26:32] Cameron: good thing. So my other big, not big drama, but my other sort of screw up during the week was buying ABG, uh, Abacus Group. I think on Friday, I ran a buy list Thursday or Friday and a new buy list and Abacus came up and a number of other stocks came up and then, um, I looked at, uh, Alex’s buy list on Monday and [00:27:00] Abacus wasn’t on there and I was like, oh, what’s going on?

[00:27:02] Cameron: She had a down negative for sentiment, I had a very positive for sentiment. And then I looked and it’s one of these things where there’s a big difference between the Bread O Later chart and the Stock Doctor chart. Uh, Google Finance has, uh,

[00:27:16] Cameron: got a different, uh, story to tell here. Looks great in the Bread O Later, doesn’t look so good in the Stock

[00:27:24] Cameron: Doctor chart. I looked it up and it said. Abacus had destapled ASK in

[00:27:32] Cameron: August. Um,

[00:27:36] Cameron: now, I, I don’t know what destapling is, but

[00:27:40] Cameron: uh, is this they spun off a

[00:27:42] Cameron: division, what’s, you ever heard of

[00:27:44] Cameron: destapling

[00:27:45] Cameron: before?

[00:27:45] Tony: Yes, um, stapled assets. I guess, particularly in the finance space or the property space, um, from memory, and I haven’t researched this recently, but from memory, it’s when the [00:28:00] ownership structure is a trust rather than a company. And if they merge, they get stapled together. It’s called stapling.

[00:28:06] Cameron: Right, So

[00:28:07] Tony: So it’s not like a company, when a company acquires another company, it’s a, it’s a trust that’s been operating. Like a REIT, a Real Estate Investment Trust.

[00:28:17] Tony: They have slightly

[00:28:18] Tony: different laws.

[00:28:20] Tony: Um,

[00:28:21] Cameron: and

[00:28:21] Cameron: that’s what

[00:28:22] Tony: to companies.

[00:28:23] Cameron: that’s what

[00:28:23] Cameron: ASK is. So I went back and looked at the press release back in February, it said Abacus Group announces its intention to create a new ASX listed self storage REIT to be known as Abacus Storage King REIT, ASK. So they de stapled that and for some reason in the um, Breadalator, the share price goes up when that happens, whereas in Stock Doctor, the share price went down and I only Mention it in the notes just to remind everybody and remind [00:29:00] myself, if you see something, say something.

[00:29:02] Cameron: If you see something that looks weird in a chart, I was saying to Tony off air, I don’t know why this big spike didn’t send off a red flag to me on Friday afternoon or wherever it was, I bought it

[00:29:14] Cameron: but I should have seen that and gone, Oh, hold on a minute, what’s

[00:29:17] Cameron: going on? But I didn’t, I just went and bought it.

[00:29:20] Cameron: And,

[00:29:20] Cameron: uh, there you go.

[00:29:23] Cameron: So

[00:29:24] Tony: Yeah, it’s strange, isn’t it, Because the bread

[00:29:26] Tony: later,

[00:29:27] Tony: which uses Google Finance And, Stock Doctor,

[00:29:30] Tony: which does, I think it use Reuters, they both have the same share

[00:29:33] Tony: price, and

[00:29:35] Cameron: Right.

[00:29:36] Tony: the, the bread later goes up to get to that share price and stock doctor goes down to get to that share price. And if you go back from when the des stapling occurred prior to that, the graphs look the same.

[00:29:47] Cameron: Yeah,

[00:29:48] Tony: so there’s something strange going on

[00:29:49] Tony: there with the

[00:29:49] Tony: data in, uh, probably in,

[00:29:51] Tony: the

[00:29:51] Tony: ator.

[00:29:53] Cameron: so the share price has gone

[00:29:54] Cameron: down 4 percent since I bought it, so

[00:29:56] Cameron: that’s

[00:29:56] Cameron: great.

[00:29:57] Tony: Mm. Mmm hmm.

[00:29:59] Cameron: to [00:30:00] any light listeners out there who, uh,

[00:30:01] Cameron: followed me on that one, I don’t know what

[00:30:03] Cameron: happened.

[00:30:04] Cameron: Anyway, you know, I’ve made mistakes before and, uh, they’ve turned out well, so, you know, SM, SMR,

[00:30:13] Cameron: I think was

[00:30:14] Tony: hmm.

[00:30:15] Cameron: of the famous ones, it’s up 80

[00:30:16] Cameron: percent since I made my mistake on that October last year, so you gotta take

[00:30:20] Cameron: the good mistakes with the bad mistakes, you

[00:30:22] Cameron: know?

[00:30:23] Tony: I remember the time that Stock Doctor said News Corp was a

[00:30:26] Tony: buy, and the figures in Stock Doctor were wrong, and that flowed through into our buy list and I bought News Corp.

[00:30:32] Cameron: Oh, really?

[00:30:33] Tony: problem.

[00:30:34] Tony: So yeah, we all make

[00:30:35] Tony: mistakes like that. It’s going

[00:30:36] Tony: to happen.

[00:30:37] Cameron: Yeah, uh, what else? CVL, pulled pork curse. You did the CVL pulled pork last week,

[00:30:45] Cameron: and

[00:30:45] Cameron: uh,

[00:30:46] Tony: It’s

[00:30:46] Tony: gone down.

[00:30:48] Cameron: fell off the edge of the world, down another couple of percent today.

[00:30:53] Cameron: What happened to CVL, Tony, after

[00:30:55] Cameron: you pulled pork?

[00:30:56] Tony: I had a quick

[00:30:57] Tony: look before we came on. I couldn’t see a thing. There’s no

[00:30:59] Tony: [00:31:00] announcements in there

[00:31:00] Tony: about it. So it’s gotta be down to me. I think it’s gotta be someone, someone listening to the show and

[00:31:06] Tony: shorting all the stocks

[00:31:07] Tony: that I do pull the porks on.

[00:31:09] Cameron: Yeah, that’s your, that’s one of your theories. Well, there is, there is something like there’s a bunch of stuff that kicked in on Friday, minutes of AGM 2023, conversion of vested performance rights and application for quotation of securities.

[00:31:27] Cameron: Any of

[00:31:28] Cameron: those, uh, provide a rational

[00:31:30] Cameron: explanation for why

[00:31:31] Cameron: it’s, uh, fallen off the edge

[00:31:33] Cameron: of a

[00:31:33] Cameron: cliff?

[00:31:34] Tony: possibly I’d have to have a

[00:31:35] Tony: look in detail at what they’re doing. Let me just have a quick look. Uh, none of them are appearing as price sensitive, which is why I didn’t look at them in detail

[00:31:45] Cameron: right.

[00:31:46] Tony: Uh, application of securities, let’s just see what that’s for.

[00:31:54] Tony: Yeah, it’s only 60, 000 securities, so I don’t think it’ll be many. It’s the Employee [00:32:00] Incentive Scheme. So, it’s possible that people have gotten their, you know, the shares based on their employee incentives, and they have then promptly sold them, which sometimes happens. So, look, there’s 507, 000 shares. And another 3. 4 million rights that were issued, and that was recently 17th of November, which would have been Thursday or Friday of last week, Friday of last week.

[00:32:33] Tony: So that, if they were issued and then sold, that could be it, or even 3 point, what did I say it was, um, 500 and, no, that’s 507

[00:32:47] Tony: million shares,

[00:32:50] Cameron: Well, there’s only 149,

[00:32:51] Cameron: 000 shares changed

[00:32:54] Cameron: hands on Monday, which is when the

[00:32:56] Cameron: price dropped.

[00:32:58] Tony: no, sorry, it’s [00:33:00] 507, 000 shares according to this, is the issued

[00:33:02] Tony: shares. And then 3. 4 million were performance rights issued under the performance rights

[00:33:09] Tony: plan. So it’s not a

[00:33:11] Tony: huge

[00:33:11] Tony: percentage, is it?

[00:33:13] Tony: Three on five hundred.

[00:33:14] Cameron: If I look at their…

[00:33:16] Cameron: Average daily trading volume, you know, in the days leading up to that, it was sort of on the 14th, it was 56, 000, 15th, it was 41, 000, 16th, 20, 000, 17th, 23, 000, the 20th, 149, 000. So roughly

[00:33:35] Cameron: six, seven times the normal

[00:33:37] Cameron: trading volume

[00:33:39] Cameron: happened on that day and drove the price

[00:33:42] Cameron: down. So it’s weird, something

[00:33:44] Cameron: happened.

[00:33:46] Tony: I’m guessing it was the

[00:33:47] Tony: issue of performance shares and then they’ve just been

[00:33:49] Tony: sold off straight

[00:33:50] Tony: away.

[00:33:51] Cameron: Right, so,

[00:33:53] Cameron: employees, most senior executives, mostly

[00:33:58] Cameron: just going, [00:34:00] screw the shareholders, we’re going to dump our shares

[00:34:02] Cameron: and, uh,

[00:34:04] Cameron: you can all bite me,

[00:34:05] Cameron: basically.

[00:34:06] Tony: Well, possibly one

[00:34:07] Tony: of the, one of

[00:34:07] Tony: the tricks, one of the problems with employee share offers in

[00:34:11] Tony: Australia is

[00:34:11] Tony: that you’ve got to pay tax on them.

[00:34:13] Tony: So a lot of management are forced to sell those shares if they have no other way of

[00:34:18] Tony: covering the tax bill. Well, they usually sell half,

[00:34:21] Tony: um,

[00:34:22] Tony: roughly

[00:34:24] Cameron: They

[00:34:24] Tony: because they’re issued in their personal

[00:34:25] Tony: names for a

[00:34:26] Tony: start.

[00:34:26] Tony: So They can’t,

[00:34:27] Tony: um, you know, they’re paying

[00:34:29] Tony: full, full tax on

[00:34:31] Tony: them as

[00:34:31] Cameron: they could, they could have warned the shareholders, hey, we’re about to dump a whole bunch of shares,

[00:34:37] Cameron: uh, if you, we’re going to drive the share

[00:34:40] Cameron: price down, get out

[00:34:41] Cameron: now.

[00:34:42] Cameron: While you still

[00:34:43] Cameron: can,

[00:34:44] Tony: Yeah, well, maybe

[00:34:46] Cameron: maybe

[00:34:46] Cameron: I’m asking too much.

[00:34:48] Tony: might not be

[00:34:49] Tony: the reason.

[00:34:50] Cameron: All right. Hello,

[00:34:51] Cameron: Alex.

[00:34:52] Alex: Hello?

[00:34:52] Tony: Hi darl..

[00:34:53] Alex: Hi.

[00:34:54] Cameron: How’s your, how’s your

[00:34:55] Cameron: COVID feeling?

[00:34:56] Alex: Uh, fine.

[00:34:59] Alex: I’ve lost [00:35:00] my

[00:35:00] Alex: taste like last time, so I don’t know. We’ll see. Just

[00:35:03] Alex: keep testing. Still negative, so.

[00:35:07] Tony: That’s good.

 

[00:35:08] Cameron: That’s a lovely, lovely work behind you.

[00:35:12] Alex: Thank you.

[00:35:12] Alex: So commission?

[00:35:14] Cameron: Hmm. Is it of a particular spot?

[00:35:17] Alex: Yeah, it’s Tower Hill, which is an old volcano in, um,

[00:35:21] Alex: just up from the Great Ocean

[00:35:22] Alex: Road. that You can walk around. Lots of emus, lots of emu poop.

[00:35:28] Alex: but it’s still an

[00:35:29] Alex: upspot.

[00:35:30] Cameron: Are you, are you focusing in on that in the painting? You got like big pile

[00:35:34] Cameron: of emu poop.

[00:35:37] Alex: I might paint it

[00:35:38] Alex: in and just

[00:35:39] Alex: paint over it and then I’ll

[00:35:41] Alex: know

[00:35:41] Alex: it’s there. That’s the great thing about painting things is that you can just put whatever you want as long as you cover up. At the end, you

[00:35:46] Alex: can have your own little Easter eggs in there.

[00:35:49] Cameron: Or you could go like full, I don’t know, what do they call it when you add stuff into your painting? Like

[00:35:55] Cameron: Whiteley used to stick stuff onto his paintings.

[00:35:58] Cameron: You

[00:35:58] Alex: Little

[00:35:59] Cameron: put some real,

[00:35:59] Alex: or[00:36:00]

[00:36:00] Tony: Appliqué, wasn’t it? Appliqué.

[00:36:02] Alex: collage.

[00:36:02] Cameron: yeah,

[00:36:03] Tony: yes, he’s actually stuck things

[00:36:05] Tony: onto them.

[00:36:05] Alex: Ah, okay.

[00:36:06] Cameron: yeah, yeah. But

[00:36:07] Cameron: actual things like he’d

[00:36:08] Cameron: have like a real feather stuck onto it or something like

[00:36:12] Cameron: that. You could

[00:36:12] Cameron: just stick a bit of emu poop on there. Scratch and sniff

[00:36:15] Cameron: painting.

[00:36:16] Alex: Yep, for a commission, that sounds great. Maybe for some public art or

[00:36:21] Tony: put it on Cam’s commission, see how much he likes it,

[00:36:23] Tony: Al.

[00:36:24] Cameron: Hey, I didn’t ask for a painting

[00:36:25] Cameron: of a place

[00:36:26] Cameron: that is full of emu poop. Stinky cheese would

[00:36:30] Cameron: be all right from Ajaccio.

[00:36:32] Tony: Yeah,

[00:36:32] Cameron: right.

[00:36:33] Cameron: Are you

[00:36:33] Cameron: still taking commissions? Should we put in a plug for commissions on the show? Perfect gift coming up

[00:36:39] Cameron: for Christmas. Rush job? No, maybe

[00:36:41] Alex: No pressure. Nah, this one behind me is the Christmas commission. I um, just went and had my first, uh, I did my first photo shoot with a family who I don’t know personally, who found me through, um, my college’s kind of alumni magazine that goes out every year. So they saw my stuff and… [00:37:00] Reached out and I have a little baby, so I got to go meet the baby.

[00:37:03] Alex: And then I got to try

[00:37:04] Alex: and paint the little,

[00:37:06] Alex: the little squidge ball.

[00:37:10] Alex: Yep. It’s actually the younger you are, the harder you are to paint. Cause you’ve got

[00:37:14] Alex: less distinctive

[00:37:14] Alex: distinctive features. So a baby is just like a little

[00:37:19] Cameron: All right. You got a question

[00:37:20] Cameron: for us, Alex?

[00:37:22] Alex: Yep, I’ve got one from Adi. So Adi says, Hi Cam, ABB was recently recommended in a light portfolio.

[00:37:28] Alex: They have now come up with the SPP, which I looked up should be Share Purchase Plan. Is that right?

[00:37:34] Alex: Yep. Um, so he says, what are TK’s

[00:37:36] Alex: thoughts on the SPP? Also, what is TK’s view on the

[00:37:40] Alex: resetting of the Aus

[00:37:41] Alex: China relationship and the impact it may have on

[00:37:44] Alex: stocks such as A2M

[00:37:45] Alex: and Treasure Wine?

[00:37:46] Alex: Regards, Adi.

[00:37:48] Tony: Yeah, well, first things first, ABB I think looks like a good business, Aussie Broadband. It was on the buy list and it’s now, um, the share price has risen, so it’s not quite on the [00:38:00] buy list. I think the QAB score’s about 0. 08 at the moment. Um, So the share purchase plan, I mean, this is, um, this is a company which has been growing in the

[00:38:11] Tony: telco space.

[00:38:13] Tony: Uh, and part of that growth has to be

[00:38:16] Tony: by acquisition. Uh,

[00:38:18] Tony: so they are raising money

[00:38:20] Tony: both for, uh, uh, acquisition they’ve already identified and to have a store for future

[00:38:25] Tony: ones. Um, it looks, looks good to me that… The way they’re going to run this is they’ve already issued, I

[00:38:32] Tony: think, 100 million worth of shares to

[00:38:34] Tony: institutions. They’ve got a better deal, I’ve got to

[00:38:36] Tony: say, than the retail investors. The insiders got a 10 percent discount to the share

[00:38:40] Tony: price. The way the

[00:38:42] Tony: retail share purchase plan will work for another 20 million, or up to 20 million,

[00:38:47] Tony: is they’ll work out… Um, what’s, what’s called a V, uh, VWAP price and then offer a 5 percent discount to that.

[00:38:55] Tony: So the VWAP price is the average price, volume weighted average price, um, [00:39:00] usually for five days before the closing of the, um, share purchase plan.

[00:39:05] Tony: Uh, so you get a little bit less of a discount, but, um, you are buying, buying shares in a company, which was on the buy list is not there now. Cause the share price has gone up, which

[00:39:14] Tony: I would think is probably a good thing.

[00:39:16] Tony: Um, and you’re getting maybe up to 5

[00:39:17] Tony: percent discount. So. It’s not financial advice and do your own research,

[00:39:22] Tony: but um, if I had the spare cash, I’d probably put it into ABB.

[00:39:26] Tony: And then the second question is, uh, the resetting

[00:39:30] Tony: of the Australian China relationship. Isn’t that a good term? The resetting of the Australian China relationship.

[00:39:37] Cameron: Hmm.

[00:39:38] Tony: Yeah. And, and look,

[00:39:41] Tony: According to the Prime Minister, there’s already been a 6 billion benefit to trade because of the

[00:39:48] Tony: reduction in tariffs since the last visit, which has got to be a good thing. So, you give it a tick for that. In terms of what happens from here, I don’t know. [00:40:00] And in terms of what it means for these two stocks, again, I’m not They’re not two stocks I follow, and one of the reasons why I don’t follow Treasury, Wine, or A2M is that their QAV scores are right down the very bottom of our buy list, they’re like 0.

[00:40:15] Tony: 01 each, so they’re not stocks I follow. Um, having said that, the next thing I would do is then go and look at the… Bread later for them. And both the stocks are below their sell lines. So again, sentiment isn’t with them. And I would have thought if people, if the, if the pros who are, um, analyzing these shares in depth did think they were going to about to get a bump because of the reduction in tariffs with China, that that would get backed into the share price pretty quickly.

[00:40:44] Tony: I’m not seeing it. There has been a slide up ticking. A2M. So perhaps that’s, um, that’s the case there, but it’s been, it’s been down for a long time now. And Treasury, Treasury Wine is, has declined as well. Although they have recently undertaking a large [00:41:00] capital raise themselves, speaking of SPPs, um, to buy a Californian winery.

[00:41:05] Tony: So that, that’s probably the biggest impact on their share price recently. Um, easing of China tariff should help, uh, with the wine business. I, I have read stories saying that. The Chi, there are, there’s a large market now for Chinese knockoffs in of Grange and other premium brands branded wines. So whether they can be displaced when the tariffs get reduced on the Australian wine site is something that, you know, more experienced players in the space would, would know about the N Wood.

[00:41:34] Tony: And similarly with the a AUM milk company who did have a large, um, channel into of selling milk into China through the DAU markets, which, um. Uh, kind of shut down over time, both for, I guess, tariff reasons, but probably COVID played a part in it as well. Um, whether that opens up again is possibly the case, but, um, whether their business has been replaced by other suppliers is also, I guess, pertinent [00:42:00] to it as well.

[00:42:00] Tony: So, I don’t follow either stock, um, I can’t really comment on them. Um, the tariffs still haven’t been reduced on these two things, uh, so it’s a watch and see.

[00:42:09] Cameron: Hmm. Yeah. It’s kind of a little bit of prediction to try and

[00:42:13] Cameron: work that out really, isn’t it? Like the benefits

[00:42:15] Cameron: of those things.

[00:42:17] Tony: Well, it’s a lot of prediction, and, um, like I said,

[00:42:20] Tony: You’d think that someone would, would have been making calls on that prediction by now and buying up the shares if it was going to be a good

[00:42:26] Tony: thing, and I’m not seeing that in either share price,

[00:42:28] Tony: really.

[00:42:29] Cameron: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for that question, Adi slash

[00:42:34] Cameron: Alex.

[00:42:35] Alex: No problems.

[00:42:36] Cameron: People, if people do want to commission some work from you, Alex, for next Christmas,

[00:42:42] Cameron: uh, where do they find you?

[00:42:44] Alex: Um, well, my website is just www.

[00:42:48] Alex: alexkynaston. com. Nice and simple. Got to that first. Um, or just Gmail. That’s good too. Alex. Kynaston at gmail. com.

[00:42:56] Alex: Yeah.

[00:42:57] Cameron: Does your dad register that URL

[00:42:58] Cameron: for you when you were a [00:43:00] baby?

[00:43:01] Alex: No, actually not that common a name still, even though Alex is like half of my

[00:43:08] Alex: age

[00:43:08] Alex: group.

[00:43:12] Tony: No.

[00:43:12] Cameron: My, I think my boys are still cranky at me that I didn’t register their name as URLs

[00:43:16] Cameron: when they were babies. Hunter is anyway, he’s

[00:43:19] Cameron: still

[00:43:19] Cameron: cranky at me.

[00:43:20] Tony: What, there’s someone out there called HunterRaleigh.

[00:43:22] Tony: com.

[00:43:23] Cameron: Apparently, yes. I know there’s a Taylor

[00:43:27] Cameron: Riley. com and she’s a YouTube, uh, influencer in the

[00:43:30] Cameron: US, but, uh, uh, and she’s a little person too, I

[00:43:34] Cameron: think. A little person, YouTube

[00:43:36] Cameron: influencer. Yeah. But

[00:43:38] Tony: Well, maybe Hunter could, or Taylor could

[00:43:39] Tony: do a deal with

[00:43:40] Tony: her

[00:43:40] Tony: and

[00:43:40] Cameron: That’s what I keep saying. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:43:42] Cameron: Yeah.

[00:43:43] Cameron: B.

[00:43:43] Tony: you just register TaylorAReilly or something, whatever his middle initial

[00:43:46] Tony: is, dot

[00:43:47] Tony: com. Yeah.

[00:43:51] Tony: Thanks,

[00:43:52] Tony: Al.

[00:43:52] Cameron: Get back to your paintings. Off you go.

[00:43:54] Cameron: Got my commission to finish. No time to waste.

[00:43:57] Alex: say Bye.

[00:43:58] Tony: Bye. All[00:44:00]

[00:44:00] Cameron: What have you got on

[00:44:01] Cameron: your, uh, to talk, things to talk about

[00:44:03] Cameron: list, Tony?

[00:44:04] Tony: Yeah, probably just a

[00:44:06] Tony: couple

[00:44:06] Tony: of things and not

[00:44:07] Tony: much. We talked about, I think you had a

[00:44:10] Tony: quote last week from an interview Charlie Munger did saying you had to

[00:44:14] Tony: own one of

[00:44:14] Tony: the

[00:44:15] Tony: top seven

[00:44:17] Tony: large cap

[00:44:18] Tony: tech stocks in the U. S. And I’ve now been able to listen to the whole interview on a podcast that he did, although he’s very old.

[00:44:28] Tony: It’s quite hard to hear him, it’s not great quality.

[00:44:32] Tony: Anyway. Bye. But, uh, later on in the interview, he did say that they bought Apple years ago when it was 10

[00:44:40] Tony: times earnings. Um, uh, I’m not sure why it was 10 times earnings at the time, but it was, you know, down. So, it’s not, it’s much more than 10 times earnings now.

[00:44:50] Tony: But I

[00:44:50] Tony: guess my point is that I scratched my head when I heard that they wanted to buy Apple, which I think is now 30 times

[00:44:55] Tony: earnings. Well, he was recommending it, but then… Later on in the interview, he [00:45:00] said, Oh, we bought it 10 times, which makes a lot more sense to me. That’s more the way that Munger and Buffett operate.

[00:45:06] Tony: So I just wanted to, to, um, clarify that cause I was scratching my head going, what, why are they paying up for a company like Apple?

[00:45:12] Tony: Um,

[00:45:14] Tony: at 30 times earnings, even if they think it’s a good company. And, but if they bought it 10 times, that’s a good price. Uh, and I’ve got a pulled pork to do. So if you’re listening short sellers, I won’t mention the name.

[00:45:27] Tony: I’ll just talk about the

[00:45:29] Tony: company in general, and I can try and work it out.

[00:45:32] Tony: No, I will

[00:45:32] Tony: mention the name.

[00:45:34] Cameron: By the way, sorry, before you move on to that,

[00:45:37] Cameron: I’m looking at, I’m looking at Berkshire’s Apple purchases. They first bought ’em back in

[00:45:42] Cameron: 2016

[00:45:44] Tony: Mm

[00:45:44] Cameron: at an average closing price of $24 91.

[00:45:50] Cameron: Um, they bought more shares in 2016 at 24 85 than more at 28, 35. They’ve been buying shares all along the way. The last. [00:46:00] Tronch that they did was in 2023 at 147.

[00:46:05] Cameron: 55. So they still buy, well they were buying shares in Q1 of 2023, U. S. Q1.

[00:46:14] Cameron: So they keep adding shares. So, um,

[00:46:17] Cameron: yeah,

[00:46:18] Cameron: there might have been 10

[00:46:19] Cameron: times

[00:46:19] Cameron: earnings when they first bought in them in

[00:46:21] Tony: Oh, yeah. Yeah,

[00:46:23] Cameron: they’ve been

[00:46:24] Cameron: adding more and more, um,

[00:46:26] Cameron: over the years.

[00:46:30] Cameron: You know, I think they got the majority, well, the first trench was 39 million shares over the course of 2016, 2017, they bought, I don’t know, about 400

[00:46:43] Cameron: million shares by the looks of it.

[00:46:45] Cameron: Then another 300 million in

[00:46:46] Cameron: 2018. I think whenever they sold some

[00:46:49] Cameron: along the way as well, but I think whenever it has a dip.

[00:46:53] Cameron: For

[00:46:53] Cameron: whatever reason they

[00:46:54] Cameron: swing in and they buy more.

[00:46:56] Cameron: Yeah,

[00:46:56] Tony: okay. Yeah, because Charlie, I think Charlie did

[00:46:58] Tony: mention [00:47:00] 2017 is when they bought it

[00:47:01] Tony: at 10 times earnings.

[00:47:02] Tony: Very

[00:47:05] Cameron: So now it’s trading at, uh, what is it?

[00:47:08] Cameron: 191

[00:47:09] Cameron: today. So

[00:47:10] Tony: They are good investors. Much better than I am.

[00:47:13] Cameron: it’s had a good 10 year run.

[00:47:15] Tony: Hasn’t it?

[00:47:16] Tony: Yeah.

[00:47:17] Cameron: All right, off you

[00:47:18] Cameron: go.

[00:47:20] Tony: Yeah, pulled pork on DGL

[00:47:21] Tony: group, um, code DGL, I don’t know what DGL stands for,

[00:47:27] Cameron: ha!

[00:47:29] Tony: it is a specially chemicals and dangerous goods business,

[00:47:33] Tony: um, started off in New Zealand. They operate, uh, in all the, um, different parts of the chain, supply chain for dangerous goods and chemicals, from manufacturing, storing, distribution, through to recycling.

[00:47:47] Tony: Uh, started in New Zealand, as I said, but operates in Australia as well, and listed here in 2022. I think it might have listed, I’m not sure if it’s a dual listing, but it may have been the New Zealand listing as well. But it’s been around for a [00:48:00] lot longer than that. Founded in 1999 by a chap called Simon Henry, and he’s still the CEO, and uh, when I looked up their details in Stock Doctor, it lists him as Founder and CEO, so he obviously places an emphasis on that, um, as I do.

[00:48:19] Tony: Uh, they operate 26 sites. And, uh, mainly for manufacturing, storage distribution, and waste processing. Their last numbers were really good, so they’ve been growing by acquisition, and I guess organically as well. Um, the last numbers show an increase of… In sales of 26%, 18% in the amount of chemicals they store, the chemical tonnage, and 78% in the amount of trucks, uh, tankers and, uh, trailers that they, uh, that they own 45% in.

[00:48:56] Tony: Um, increasing, uh, increased number of [00:49:00] employees and profit was up 25%. And when I say profit, I mean ebit and we’ll come to MPA in a second. Um. Yeah, I’ll come to it in a second. Uh, so all those numbers are suggesting that they’re growing um, by acquisition of the fact that there are 45 percent more employees.

[00:49:16] Tony: Um, could happen organically, but it’s more likely that they’ve been, uh, acquiring things. The company has no dividend payouts and they, um, openly state that they’d rather put the money into growing the company. So that’s a good thing. So it’s basically a growth company, uh, and growing fast and the growth has been similar.

[00:49:34] Tony: Um, similar sorts of rates over the last three years. So it’s just, it’s not a flash in the pan. This is their business model. Um, however, the, the NPAT, um, uh, was down a little bit anyway. Um, and, uh, they said for financial year 23, they said that was due to increasing debt and interest rates. So that could be an issue for them going forward.

[00:49:58] Tony: Uh, that if they are a bit [00:50:00] indebted, they might slow down the rate of acquisition going forward. Um, And to give you a flavour of the kind of things they do, in 2024, they plan to open a new liquid waste treatment plant in a place called Unandera in New South Wales. And they’ve just opened a battery recycling plant in Laverton, Victoria.

[00:50:22] Tony: So that’s the kind of business they are. And now for some controversy. Controversy corner. Uh, when I was… Doing research onto this company, I came across a very interesting article in the Fin Review from last year, where an interview with Simon Henry, the principal and founder of the company, was published after he did an interview with a New Zealand journal.

[00:50:48] Tony: Uh, and he was boasting that the DGL float did better than another New Zealand company which is called MyFoodBag. And I guess generally he was trying to point out that they [00:51:00] raised money when they floated and put it all into the business. And this other company, MyFoodBag, raised money and gave it to the founders and private equity backers.

[00:51:10] Tony: Um, That’s a good comparison and a good lesson to make when you’re investing to watch out for that kind of thing. But this quote, and I’m going to read it all as quoted by the AFR, so don’t come after me if you don’t like what I say. But this is a quote given by Simon Henry about the, um, Comparison between the DGL float and the MyFoodback float.

[00:51:39] Tony: Quote, I can tell you, and you can quote me, when you’ve got nadia limb, when you’ve got a little bit of Eurasian fluff in the middle of your prospectus with a Blauzon button showing some cleavage,

[00:51:50] Tony: that’s what it takes to sell your script, then you know you’re in

[00:51:53] Tony: trouble.

[00:51:55] Cameron: He didn’t!

[00:51:57] Tony: Quote, end quote.

[00:51:58] Cameron: Oh my

[00:51:59] Cameron: [00:52:00] god! Ha ha

[00:52:02] Tony: quote, he said, I don’t get it. Henry continued asking why anyone who liked the company would sell their shares as my food back, my food bags earlier backers had. I mean, I’m a simple man with, it seems a simple rule rule for board composition. The uglier the board, the more

[00:52:18] Tony: successful the company.

[00:52:19] Tony: quote.

[00:52:23] Cameron: Oh wow!

[00:52:25] Cameron: Wow!

[00:52:26] Tony: so I read those out, both for interest and

[00:52:29] Tony: full disclosure, and I guess, you

[00:52:31] Tony: know, the guys,

[00:52:32] Tony: um, it kind of, it credentials him as being from the trucking industry and waste management industry

[00:52:38] Cameron: ha! Ha ha

[00:52:39] Tony: 30 years or

[00:52:40] Tony: whatever, um, but, you know,

[00:52:43] Tony: buyer beware, that’s what you’re buying into with this company, he owns 54

[00:52:46] Tony: percent of it.

[00:52:47] Cameron: Wow!

[00:52:48] Tony: don’t think it worked out well for him that interview, because the share price has gone down. I think it was trading at about 3. 90 around the time of the interview and it’s now 86 cents. So I’m not sure whether the interview sparked off that [00:53:00] sell off or other things have sparked it off, but that’s what the share price has done in the meantime.

[00:53:06] Tony: However, it has come up onto our buy list, and again, people do your research if you have a look at this because it’s, uh, it’s right on its sell line. It’s been a falling knife since, um, around the time of that interview in the middle of last year, May of last year. Uh, it has ticked up, so this is like a, an inverse Nike swoosh.

[00:53:25] Tony: It’s been going down and now it’s starting to tick up again, but, um, it’s just touching on, it’s crossing its sell line at the moment, so it may change from day to day, this one. If I look at the numbers, um, let’s just see, ADT, If I can find it, uh, ADT is 188, 000. So it’s not, um, not small, but not, not huge. Uh, but maybe of interest to people.

[00:53:55] Tony: Uh, and also too, I couldn’t work out whether it was, there was a dual listing or not, which might impact [00:54:00] the free flow over here, but certainly there’s enough volume there for some people who were interested in, um, in smaller end of the market to buy some. I’m doing my analysis at 88 cents. Uh, it’s, it has been moving around a bit, the price on this one, but 88 cents is less than consensus target, but is above my IV one and IV two calculation, so I can’t store score it for that, for that stock doctor Financial health is strong and steady.

[00:54:27] Tony: The first thing that that. Uh, sort of, uh, tripped my interest was the low ROE in this company, and I don’t use ROE in a checklist, but at 7%, I thought that was interesting, and, um, given that the numbers were good, the headline numbers were good, as I read out before, ROE Um, the return side looked good, but the equity side might be a problem.

[00:54:49] Tony: And so the first thing I thought of was, let’s have a look at, um, the net tangible assets versus equity. Uh, and there could be a bit of goodwill because they’ve been acquiring companies. And in fact, I think that [00:55:00] might be the case. So I’ll jump ahead here. Net equity per share is 1. 17. However, net tangible assets is 66 cents as reported in Stock Doctor.

[00:55:10] Tony: So the difference is probably goodwill. Um, as they, as they acquire countries, companies, sorry, there could be some other things in there, like it may be the treatment of their equipment leasing, because they’re, they’ve got a lot of trucks and trailers, as I highlighted before, which, which, um, may have some different balance sheet treatments in terms of being assets or not.

[00:55:29] Tony: Um, And that’s, that’s not necessarily a good or bad thing, um, we’ve talked about this before with other companies that make lots of acquisitions. I recall doing a pulled pork on one of the car dealerships and they have lots of goodwill because they’re acquiring, uh, other franchises, um, and dealerships around the country.

[00:55:47] Tony: Uh, and I’ll come back to, to goodwill when I do the pros and cons at the end about the share. Uh, P for this company is 11 times, which is the lowest since listing, so it scores for that. Uh, [00:56:00] Share price is less than net equity per share and book plus 30, so it is scoring for that, although some people might want to use net tangible assets, which is the fire sale price of the equity.

[00:56:15] Tony: Earnings per share growth forecast is only 3%, which I thought was interesting, uh, given that, you know, The last three years of growth have been much higher than that, um, but we’re talking earnings per share here, so that could be the impact of the raising interest rates, um, on their, on their debt levels.

[00:56:34] Tony: Uh, but it could also be that the company hasn’t called out yet what its growth plans are in 2024, and it probably won’t if they want to inquire, acquire companies. They won’t be telling you who they’re going to acquire until they lob their bid. Um, so that’s, um, That may change as well. Uh, as I said, it scores well for owner founder with, uh, this fellow holding 54 percent and being there since the company started.

[00:56:59] Tony: [00:57:00] So lots of experience. Um, it’s a new three point trend line increase, but you know, check it before you. Go much further because it’s just right on the sell line. There’s consistently increasing equity, which is good. Uh, all in all, the quality score is 16 very high. And the QAV score is 0. 22 due to some good PropCaf.

[00:57:23] Tony: So pros and cons. Um, pros, uh, uh, there’s an owner founder and high growth rates. The cons are it’s a roll up. So it’s, it’s, um. It’s growing organically as well as through acquisition, but it is needing acquisitions to fuel some of this growth. And the question I always have to ask when I talk about roll ups is what happens when the acquisition is slow?

[00:57:44] Tony: I don’t know how many chemical transport and storage and manufacturing and battery recycling companies there are out there. So It may be a small acquisitions pool, but who knows, they may go offshore as well. So that’s an issue. [00:58:00] Um, the interesting thing is, even though it’s a roll up, the P is low on this.

[00:58:04] Tony: It, uh, I think I said, um, it’s around 10 times earnings, uh, which is unusual for a high growth company. So you look at some of the other roll ups on the, on the stock market, like say a WiseTech. Global, um, which they argued another roll up, but I think they are, their PE is much higher, uh, and usually a company growing at 20 or 30%, even if the sales line is going to have a high PE.

[00:58:29] Tony: So this one doesn’t. So I guess my point is when the acquisitions start to slow down, the company has more of a buffer. It’s not going to drop as much as a high PE company would most likely. Uh, and then goodwill is the other thing I was in the cons column and it’s, you know, it can be a good and bad thing.

[00:58:46] Tony: Um, the risk is that, is that if the companies they have acquired, uh, don’t work out or hit some headwinds, then they’re going to have to take a write down on the, or an impairment charge on the goodwill on their balance sheet [00:59:00] for that acquisition, and, uh, that has to go through the The P& L, and so that would be an impact on profitability there and then that year, but also on the discounted cash flow models going forward that that asset isn’t producing the sort of income that it was thought to have when it was acquired.

[00:59:18] Tony: So, uh, possible impairments on Goodwill is an issue. Um, It can work the other way, of course, if something works out really well, like they can write the asset up or, or, um, slowly, um, write down the goodwill over time. Um, and of course, if you, if they find there’s a buyer for something, they can sell it at more than the goodwill in the books and then it’s booked as a profit.

[00:59:38] Tony: But too much goodwill is seen sometimes as being an issue for companies. I think the other potential con on this one is they’ve called out the fact that raising interest rates are reducing profitability, so they’ve got to do something about that, whether it’s the capital raising, selling something, or paying off debt.

[00:59:56] Tony: But it’s fine to have growth at the top level, they’ve got to get their [01:00:00] financing sorted out as well. But on the Stock Doctor, Financial metrics, it’s still coming through as strong. So, um, I don’t

[01:00:06] Tony: think debt’s going to be a problem for them

[01:00:08] Tony: going

[01:00:09] Tony: forward.

[01:00:12] Cameron: Only the founder, uh, making

[01:00:14] Cameron: quotes to the press.

[01:00:15] Tony: Yeah. I couldn’t find any more interviews since May of

[01:00:18] Tony: last year. So he

[01:00:19] Tony: may have learned his lesson.

[01:00:21] Cameron: I found one from just today. No, this is a year ago. November 22. Referencing that quote about the little bit of Eurasian fluff says, The comments were prompted by a photograph of Lim, and she’s a New Zealand celebrity chef, as you said, who was one of the founders of my food

[01:00:43] Cameron: bag. Photograph of Lim barbecuing a chicken while wearing jeans in a low

[01:00:47] Cameron: cut

[01:00:48] Cameron: top. Now, I’ve got a copy of the

[01:00:50] Cameron: photo here in

[01:00:51] Cameron: this article, it’s

[01:00:52] Cameron: like, there’s nothing racy

[01:00:53] Cameron: about it at

[01:00:55] Cameron: all.

[01:00:55] Tony: No,

[01:00:57] Cameron: And it says, in his first interview since his [01:01:00] outburst, Henry told the Herald on Sunday he thought it was completely fascinating that a country could stop and have a hissy fit about the original comments.

[01:01:08] Cameron: He said he regretted using race and gender in his earlier comments. I got my words wrong. And I’ve apologized for that reason. I wish I’d drawn attention to the matter without mentioning race or gender. I wanted to make a point.

[01:01:20] Cameron: I’m not going to bother with it again. Fast talking Aucklanders

[01:01:23] Cameron: can do what they like to

[01:01:24] Cameron: New Zealand investors. I had a go at it, but I’m

[01:01:26] Cameron: out.

[01:01:30] Tony: He made a good point. Yeah. When, when something is being floated and being sold to the public, be careful where the

[01:01:36] Tony: money goes, where the proceeds from those floats go. If it doesn’t go into

[01:01:40] Tony: the business, there’s, you’ve got to ask questions about whether

[01:01:42] Tony: you

[01:01:42] Tony: should be buying that

[01:01:43] Tony: company or not.

[01:01:45] Cameron: Did you have a look at the share price of my food

[01:01:47] Cameron: bag?

[01:01:48] Tony: No, I haven’t.

[01:01:50] Cameron: It, uh, yeah, not good.

[01:01:52] Cameron: It’s not good. It floated. Well, it opened at a, um, this is in 2021, it opened at a [01:02:00] 1. 74,

[01:02:01] Cameron: which I think was a bit of a discount to what they sold the shares at in the

[01:02:04] Cameron: float. Um, it’s currently at 13 cents.

[01:02:10] Cameron: Yeah.

[01:02:10] Cameron: Yeah.

[01:02:13] Tony: just, uh, coded it in, um, emu

[01:02:16] Tony: droppings. No,

[01:02:22] Cameron: Yeah. Good, good stuff, Simon Henry. All right. Well, thanks for that, Tony. I don’t own DGL, so I’m not worried what happens with this one. Good luck to anybody who does own it.

[01:02:36] Cameron: Well, that’s, uh, unless you’ve got anything else, that’s

[01:02:39] Tony: that’s

[01:02:39] Tony: all. I

[01:02:42] Cameron: for today’s show.

[01:02:43] Cameron: On to After Hours, Tony. You better start,

[01:02:47] Cameron: because once I start, it’s just gonna be a whole

[01:02:49] Cameron: other hour.

[01:02:51] Tony: don’t have much. I have two things. One of

[01:02:53] Tony: the racehorse

[01:02:54] Tony: I never dreamed is going to be spelling in the paddock for a while after two starts. So it was a bit disappointing she [01:03:00] didn’t go on, but she’ll come back in the new year. And, um, I think we’ll probably follow the cast, uh, Map and head towards the South Australian Carnival, which is usually around March or so.

[01:03:14] Tony: And then on Saturday night… Jenny and I were guests at the Charity Challenge Ball again, which is the annual ball that, um, two of our golfing pro, ex golfing pro buddies have run for the last 20 years. It was the 20th edition this year. They, I think they missed a couple during COVID. Um, and they’ve raised a lot of money again for charity, um, all through holding, uh, Golf Days, which I sometimes participate in and will in a couple of weeks down again in Melbourne.

[01:03:42] Tony: So just a shout out to Smokey and Matt, you’ve done a great job, um, raising so much money, having fun along the way and good events and

[01:03:49] Tony: things, but um, they really have done, made a difference

[01:03:52] Tony: to a lot of people’s lives,

[01:03:53] Tony: so good on them.

[01:03:54] Cameron: That’s good. Did you win any other old, uh, 80s rock band,

[01:03:58] Cameron: uh,

[01:03:59] Cameron: [01:04:00] performances?

[01:04:03] Tony: I do have to follow that one up and get, try and get them to play

[01:04:06] Tony: for us at some stage.

[01:04:09] Cameron: Try and get them

[01:04:09] Cameron: to play for us.

[01:04:11] Tony: Well, we bought the Brewster Brothers at one of these charity balls a couple

[01:04:14] Tony: of years ago and we

[01:04:15] Tony: haven’t, um, haven’t

[01:04:16] Tony: held the concert yet.

[01:04:19] Cameron: Wasn’t that the

[01:04:19] Cameron: Angels concert?

[01:04:21] Tony: No, no, that was separate. That’s the

[01:04:23] Tony: Angels. Brewster Brothers were just

[01:04:24] Tony: the Brewster Brothers. Two of them

[01:04:26] Cameron: Oh, really?

[01:04:27] Tony: Yeah, who do a

[01:04:29] Tony: different set. They play other things

[01:04:30] Cameron: Oh,

[01:04:31] Cameron: really? I

[01:04:31] Tony: they do

[01:04:32] Tony: do some Angels, but they play a lot of

[01:04:33] Tony: other, um,

[01:04:34] Tony: their favorite

[01:04:34] Tony: songs.

[01:04:37] Cameron: good stuff.

[01:04:38] Tony: Yeah.

[01:04:40] Cameron: Um, well that’s good. Wow, Tony. Oh my god.

[01:04:45] Cameron: Did you

[01:04:45] Cameron: follow the OpenAI debacle over the

[01:04:47] Cameron: weekend?

[01:04:49] Tony: Oh, I

[01:04:49] Tony: just read the headlines.

[01:04:50] Tony: I

[01:04:50] Tony: haven’t

[01:04:51] Tony: really dived into

[01:04:52] Tony: it. Yeah.

[01:04:54] Cameron: it was, it’s still playing out. It’s like an episode of Succession, but you know, you watch those episodes of [01:05:00] Succession where, you know, there’s like, there’s a board spill and who’s on top and everyone’s battling and Logan’s on top. And then the kids are on top and then one kid’s out and another kid’s in.

[01:05:11] Cameron: And you’re like, Oh, this had never happened in real life. It just happened with OpenAI. And the funny thing is, you know, on this show, I think a week ago. We were talking about Microsoft and OpenAI and the investment and on Futuristic I said the same thing a couple of weeks ago that we’ve seen startups crash and burn before, like you can beat the top of the hill.

[01:05:33] Cameron: And then Crash and Burn, well they just crashed and burned over the weekend. OpenAI, they were in the process of raising, uh, getting ready to float the company with a 90 billion valuation so some of the founders and employees could offload some of their shares.

[01:05:52] Cameron: Sam Altman, one of the founders and the CEO, was flying around the world raising billions, not just for the company, but also he wanted to start [01:06:00] his own mobile phone company with Johnny Ive.

[01:06:02] Cameron: He was gonna start up his own chip company to rival NVIDIA to power AI. So for the people who haven’t followed it, um, on Friday, On Thursday or Friday last week, our time, Sam was summoned to a meeting by Ilya Sutskever, the chief scientist and also one of the founders and one of the board members. He said, Hey, can you, um, turn up to this?

[01:06:26] Cameron: Can you jump on a call? Sam jumped on the call. The full, all of the board, except the chairman of the board were on the call. Um, they confronted Sam with something. We still don’t know what. The net result was the board fired Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI. Then they brought in Greg Brockman, who was one of the founders, uh, chairman of the board, fired him from his role.

[01:06:53] Cameron: He then subsequently resigned from the company. Then, uh, [01:07:00] no one knew what was going on. They, they… We appointed the Chief Technology Officer, Meera Murati, as Interim CEO, then the next day they announced that she was gone, Sam was back in negotiations with the board to bring him back as CEO, because apparently, Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, found out one minute before they fired him that they fired him, and they’ve got a…

[01:07:26] Cameron: 10 billion investment in OpenAI looked like it was pressure from Satcher to bring Sam back and the other investors. Sam posted a photo on X, uh, formerly known as Twitter, uh, of himself wearing a guest pass to OpenAI. He tweeted the first and only time I’m going to be wearing one of these. Everyone is like, Oh, Sam’s going to be back.

[01:07:49] Cameron: Then the announcement comes out that no, they didn’t reach a deal. Sam’s out, out. Mirrors out as interim CEO, they brought a guy called Emmett Sheer in as the new interim CEO, former [01:08:00] CEO and founder, co founder of Twitch. Then an hour later, Sachin Adela tweets that he’s just hired Sam Altman and Greg Brockman to work at Microsoft with some of their colleagues.

[01:08:14] Cameron: Then this morning… An open letter, uh, to the board of OpenAI is written by the employees, including all of the senior management team, Myer, uh, et cetera, saying that 550 out of 700 of their employees are ready to resign and go to Microsoft if the board don’t immediately resign and bring back Sam and Greg. and Ilia was one of the signatories on the letter who everyone assumed was the guy behind the coup for the last co. He tweeted today that he’s deeply regretting his role in the participation of what happened. So no one [01:09:00] knows what’s going on. When the board fired him, they put out a statement saying that he hadn’t been completely candid with him in his communications and they could no longer trust him to run the company.

[01:09:12] Cameron: And for people who don’t know, the board of OpenAI, OpenAI was started by Elon Musk and Sam as a not for profit. But then when they decided they needed to raise billions of dollars to fund the back end, they put a for profit, um, under the non profit. That’s when Elon left. He said, no, no, this was supposed to be a not for profit.

[01:09:33] Cameron: I’m out. Um, and it was the board of the not for profit that fined Sam, and everyone who was on Reddit, etc., was assuming that it was out of safety concerns, that Ilya was concerned that the AI was getting too powerful, and Sam was pushing for commercialization too quickly, and Ilya wanted to pull back, but now Ilya’s on the side of the people that are walking…

[01:09:59] Cameron: So Microsoft [01:10:00] basically has just picked up www. microsoft. com A, uh, OpenAI, a 90 billion dollar company for no money down. They already have the rights to OpenAI as part of their deal. And now they’ve just, basically, looks like they’re gonna take, but here’s my thing, I think it’s all a ploy. I don’t think Sam and Greg are really, Sam’s not gonna, Sam used to run Y Combinator and he’s not gonna go work for Microsoft.

[01:10:26] Cameron: He’s, I don’t see that as a serious play. I see this as a tactic. To force

[01:10:32] Cameron: the board to resign and

[01:10:35] Cameron: he will be back. My, my call is he’ll be back at OpenAI

[01:10:39] Cameron: by the end of the week running it.

[01:10:41] Cameron: Um, this

[01:10:42] Cameron: is all a

[01:10:43] Tony: Is this sort of normal, is this sort of

[01:10:45] Tony: normal pre IPO startup politics

[01:10:49] Tony: where, you know, if they’ve got private equity and backers or hedge fund backers, they’re trying to get

[01:10:54] Tony: the lion’s share of the IPO and not

[01:10:56] Tony: pay

[01:10:56] Tony: Sam

[01:10:56] Tony: Altman out and all that

[01:10:57] Tony: kind of stuff.

[01:10:59] Cameron: It’s a [01:11:00] not for profit,

[01:11:01] Cameron: I can’t.

[01:11:03] Tony: floating then?

[01:11:04] Cameron: Well, the for profit, um, is I guess,

[01:11:08] Tony: So there’s big bucks

[01:11:09] Tony: involved and the backers are

[01:11:10] Tony: going to be trying to get the

[01:11:11] Tony: best deal.

[01:11:13] Cameron: well, I don’t, uh, yeah, but why would the, but Sam was the face of it. You wouldn’t kick Sam out if you were trying to maximize the value of the shares. I mean, the whole thing has just made them look like a complete clusterfrack and, uh, run by a bunch of amateurs. I mean, it’s completely. For the moment, uh, destroyed the company that on Friday was the leading the world in AI, the biggest brand in AI ahead, ahead of everyone else in the space, the leader, 90 billion valuation, you know, just cleaning up.

[01:11:54] Cameron: The whole thing, within two

[01:11:56] Cameron: days, just credibility shot, [01:12:00] everyone’s gone, mass walkouts. It, it’s been an absolute fascinating shit

[01:12:07] Cameron: show. But that’s, that was my point over the last couple of weeks as I’ve been around long enough to see these startups. Rise and fall, uh, never quite this quickly. But, uh, yeah, that’s the speed of how things are moving.

[01:12:24] Cameron: So anyway, that’s been absolutely fascinating to watch. And I’ve been listening to live streams of Robert Scoble and all the people that are in the know, in the tech space over there on Twitter, um, trying to figure it out. No one knows what’s going on. No one has a

[01:12:40] Cameron: clue.

[01:12:41] Cameron: Anyway, but, you know.

[01:12:43] Cameron: Well played to Satya Nadella.

[01:12:45] Cameron: I don’t know

[01:12:45] Cameron: how it’s gonna play out in

[01:12:47] Cameron: the end, but he just sat there

[01:12:49] Cameron: and just, you know, picked

[01:12:52] Cameron: up, by the looks of it, a 90 billion dollar company for no money down. Like, um, [01:13:00] anyway, that’s been fun to

[01:13:01] Cameron: watch. Uh, you ever heard of the Berserker Hypothesis, Tony? Ever read Fred Saberhagen’s

[01:13:07] Cameron: books?

[01:13:08] Tony: No.

[01:13:10] Cameron: So we’ve been talking about the Dark Forest Hypothesis.

[01:13:14] Cameron: So in the 60s, this American science fiction author called Fred Saberhagen wrote a series of short stories for like science fiction magazines that got collated into a series of books called the Berserker Books. And it led to something called the Berserker Hypothesis. But basically these books just are about.

[01:13:38] Cameron: These massive machines that are run by artificial intelligence that some alien civilization built, and they just travel around the universe, destroying all life. That’s their one mission, basically Daleks, right? Their mission is to just, to destroy life. No explanation. At various points in the [01:14:00] stories, humans get to interview them and they say, well, we don’t know why we weren’t told why our instructions are just to destroy life wherever we find it.

[01:14:07] Cameron: That’s it. And that’s what they do. These machines are like 40 miles across. They just appear out of nowhere, pummel a planet, destroy everything, and then just move on. And There’s this thing called the Hart Tipler conjecture, which I’d never heard of before, but apparently it was one of the early responses to the Fermi Paradox.

[01:14:34] Cameron: So the Hart Tipler conjecture is that if intelligent civilizations existed, advanced intelligent civilizations, the Neumann probes, basically self replicating probes that would travel the universe looking for signs of intelligent life. And they should have been here by now. And apparently the [01:15:00] original book of, um, 2001 and the original draft for the script for Kubrick’s film, that’s what the monolith was on the moon.

[01:15:10] Cameron: It was a von Neumann probe that had discovered earth. When it was, had some primitive life on it with the monkeys, the chimps and whatever. And it was just sitting and watching, waiting for it to reach an advanced enough stage that it could, um, signal or do something when it got taken out of the film. So we don’t know, but anyway, that’s the idea of the von Neumann probes.

[01:15:35] Cameron: And the fact that we haven’t. seen any evidence of von Neumann probes visiting earth is evidence that there are no sufficiently advanced intelligences in the universe building von Neumann probes to explore the universe, that the universe should be full of these things by now, self replicating, all corners of the universe just looking for

[01:15:58] Cameron: evidence of intelligent life, [01:16:00] either to destroy it

[01:16:01] Cameron: Or to make contact with it.

[01:16:04] Cameron: So I found all of that. That’s

[01:16:05] Cameron: been one of

[01:16:06] Cameron: my, this has been my nighttime reading

[01:16:08] Cameron: is these Berserker books

[01:16:09] Cameron: over the

[01:16:10] Tony: Yeah, except that’s kind of the, that’s kind of the, reverse

[01:16:12] Tony: of the Dark

[01:16:13] Tony: Forest problem, isn’t

[01:16:14] Tony: it?

[01:16:16] Cameron: it’s part,

[01:16:16] Cameron: well,

[01:16:16] Tony: want to be out

[01:16:17] Tony: there

[01:16:17] Tony: in case you’re discovered. You don’t want to be

[01:16:19] Tony: out there telling

[01:16:19] Tony: civilizations, Hey, we’re here.

[01:16:21] Tony: Someone

[01:16:22] Tony: built this probe.

[01:16:23] Tony: Yeah.

[01:16:24] Cameron: Yeah. So the, yeah, so the dark forest hypothesis

[01:16:27] Cameron: is obviously another response to the Fermi paradox, which is no, if you’re clever, you shut the hell up and

[01:16:33] Cameron: don’t let. Anyway, but if you sent out von Norman probes, you wouldn’t have to, no one would have to know the origin of them.

[01:16:38] Cameron: Like with the Berserker machines, no one knows the origin of these things and no civilization survives long enough to find out about them either. You know, most civilizations the Berserker machines come across are just wiped out immediately and that’s it. One minute there’s a Berserker

[01:16:53] Cameron: machine on your front doorstep, next minute you’re all dead.

[01:16:55] Cameron: So there’s

[01:16:56] Cameron: no risk of it blowing back onto the

[01:16:59] Cameron: [01:17:00] originators of the

[01:17:00] Cameron: machines who may have been wiped out

[01:17:02] Cameron: millions of

[01:17:02] Cameron: years ago

[01:17:03] Cameron: anyway.

[01:17:04] Tony: wouldn’t the von

[01:17:04] Tony: Neumann probe though communicate

[01:17:06] Tony: back to its home planet that

[01:17:08] Tony: it’s found something?

[01:17:10] Cameron: Maybe. Maybe, yeah, if that’s

[01:17:12] Cameron: practical.

[01:17:13] Cameron: Maybe if it’s, you know, light

[01:17:15] Cameron: years away, it’s, it’s not even practical to

[01:17:17] Cameron: communicate back.

[01:17:18] Tony: And what’s the use of the probe?

[01:17:21] Tony: Why have the probe?

[01:17:23] Cameron: Well, either, in a benign sense, to make contact with the civilization and say, Hi, welcome to the Galactic Federation.

[01:17:30] Cameron: Um, please send an email to this

[01:17:33] Cameron: address and, you know, your, your submission for entrance will

[01:17:37] Cameron: be assessed. Or, to wipe us out!

[01:17:41] Cameron: To

[01:17:41] Cameron: go, oh, yeah, okay, let’s self

[01:17:43] Cameron: replicate. And build a million of these things

[01:17:46] Cameron: and

[01:17:46] Cameron: then we just pummel the

[01:17:47] Cameron: earth and wipe you out because you’re

[01:17:50] Cameron: potentially a threat.

[01:17:53] Cameron: Anyway, I was

[01:17:54] Cameron: wondering if you’d ever come across that in your reading.

[01:17:58] Tony: I think I may have read the Berserker book when [01:18:00] I was a kid. I’ve been around for a

[01:18:01] Tony: while. But I don’t

[01:18:03] Tony: recall it. I don’t have a point of view.

[01:18:06] Tony: I’ve heard various people talk about this and they say You know, with an expanding universe, it gets very hard for von Neumann probes to get anywhere. Like, we look at the night sky and see lots of stars, but we’re seeing a really small part of the night sky, and they’re a really long way away, and there’s huge gaps in between.

[01:18:24] Tony: So

[01:18:24] Tony: that, that in itself

[01:18:26] Tony: is an

[01:18:26] Tony: answer to the Fermi

[01:18:27] Tony: Paradox.

[01:18:29] Cameron: Yeah.

[01:18:30] Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. It’s just the universe is expanding. It’s

[01:18:33] Cameron: just impractical and improbable that

[01:18:35] Cameron: you can reach other galaxies and do

[01:18:38] Cameron: anything about it.

[01:18:39] Cameron: You

[01:18:39] Cameron: know?

[01:18:40] Tony: yeah,

[01:18:40] Tony: no, exactly.

[01:18:43] Cameron: Well, speaking of reaching,

[01:18:45] Tony: one last thing I

[01:18:46] Tony: should, I

[01:18:46] Tony: should have put in my list. Um, there’s Biskin

[01:18:49] Tony: book

[01:18:49] Tony: out, which I’m looking forward to

[01:18:51] Cameron: Oh, what’s this one

[01:18:52] Cameron: about?

[01:18:53] Tony: Uh, about the sort of golden

[01:18:55] Tony: age of television

[01:18:56] Tony: this time.

[01:18:58] Cameron: When was that exactly? Is that

[01:18:59] Cameron: [01:19:00] now?

[01:19:00] Tony: Now,

[01:19:00] Tony: yeah, so

[01:19:01] Cameron: Oh,

[01:19:01] Tony: from, from, like the

[01:19:03] Tony: Sopranos

[01:19:04] Tony: and the Wire onwards

[01:19:05] Cameron: Can you call that the

[01:19:06] Cameron: golden age if it’s the

[01:19:07] Cameron: current

[01:19:08] Cameron: age?

[01:19:09] Cameron: This isn’t the golden age

[01:19:10] Cameron: and for

[01:19:11] Tony: like from when HBO

[01:19:12] Tony: started.

[01:19:13] Cameron: Yeah, right. Yeah. That’d be good

[01:19:16] Cameron: to, yeah, that’d be good to read. It’s

[01:19:18] Cameron: been a, like, I like, I, you go back and watch shows from the 80s or the

[01:19:22] Cameron: 90s now, and you’re like, wow, really?

[01:19:26] Cameron: Like, that’s, we settled for

[01:19:28] Cameron: that as TV

[01:19:29] Cameron: back then.

[01:19:31] Cameron: it’s

[01:19:32] Tony: yeah, absolutely.

[01:19:34] Cameron: it’s really hard to

[01:19:36] Cameron: grok how we just, why TV was relatively so

[01:19:41] Cameron: bad for so many

[01:19:43] Cameron: decades compared to where it’s at

[01:19:45] Cameron: today.

[01:19:47] Tony: Oh, but you know, maybe because of the

[01:19:50] Tony: writer’s strike, but I must spend half an hour every night going through each of the streaming services trying to find something decent to watch. Actually, I’ve even gone back and started watching old movies now. [01:20:00] Um, I watch Moneyball again,

[01:20:02] Tony: which I

[01:20:02] Tony: just love. I think that’s going to be my annual sort

[01:20:04] Tony: of thing.

[01:20:05] Tony: Oh, it’s brilliant.

[01:20:07] Cameron: I’ve got to check that out. it’s

[01:20:08] Tony: Really spoke to me because it’s all

[01:20:09] Tony: about data

[01:20:10] Tony: analytics, you

[01:20:10] Tony: know, and using it to

[01:20:12] Cameron: Right,

[01:20:13] Tony: Um, and, uh,

[01:20:15] Tony: then I watched the, uh, I think it’s called Legend,

[01:20:18] Tony: the story of the Krays, which came out

[01:20:21] Tony: about 10 years ago with, um, Tom Hardy

[01:20:24] Tony: playing both,

[01:20:25] Tony: both of the gangster

[01:20:27] Cameron: Oh, the Krays, the

[01:20:29] Cameron: Kray

[01:20:29] Cameron: brothers.

[01:20:31] Cameron: Oh, wow.

[01:20:32] Tony: Yeah,

[01:20:32] Tony: so I mean,

[01:20:34] Tony: not sort of, I started watching Ambruges again last night, so I’m just like, I’m giving up on all this new stuff that’s out, it’s all crap, on

[01:20:41] Tony: Netflix in particular, I’m

[01:20:42] Tony: just

[01:20:43] Tony: trying to find good

[01:20:43] Tony: movies to re watch,

[01:20:45] Cameron: Have you seen his new one

[01:20:46] Cameron: yet? With the same cast, the

[01:20:50] Cameron: director of Imbruge,

[01:20:51] Tony: Yeah, The

[01:20:52] Tony: Banshees of

[01:20:53] Cameron: Yeah, have you seen

[01:20:54] Tony: that’s great, yeah,

[01:20:55] Cameron: I haven’t

[01:20:55] Cameron: seen it

[01:20:56] Cameron: yet. oh I’ve been dying to see it.

[01:20:57] Cameron: Yeah,

[01:20:58] Tony: yeah, [01:21:00]

[01:21:00] Cameron: I’m going to see

[01:21:01] Cameron: Napoleon with my boys

[01:21:03] Cameron: tomorrow night. And then Markham and I are going to do

[01:21:05] Cameron: a reunion Napoleon show to review it.

[01:21:10] Tony: fantastic.

[01:21:11] Cameron: he told me that, he told me in an email yesterday that he

[01:21:14] Cameron: misses you and wishes they’d never let

[01:21:17] Cameron: you leave Toronto.

[01:21:18] Tony: Oh, how

[01:21:19] Tony: nice. Well,

[01:21:19] Tony: mention, mention our love for him too,

[01:21:21] Cameron: That’s, uh, I

[01:21:22] Cameron: figured that’s just because, you know, he

[01:21:24] Cameron: can’t invite himself out

[01:21:25] Cameron: to expensive restaurants

[01:21:27] Tony: Yeah,

[01:21:29] Tony: probably,

[01:21:30] Cameron: won’t

[01:21:30] Cameron: have you pay for

[01:21:31] Cameron: it. Yeah.

[01:21:37] Tony: Going through a bottle of scotch and talking

[01:21:39] Tony: politics, and it’s good, good

[01:21:40] Tony: fun, and history.

[01:21:42] Cameron: that’s the thing. I have to do a, an episode of Napoleon with David and not talk

[01:21:46] Cameron: about politics for

[01:21:48] Cameron: a couple of hours.

[01:21:49] Cameron: That’s

[01:21:49] Cameron: going to be

[01:21:50] Tony: Well, do an After Hours. Do the

[01:21:52] Tony: episode and then do After

[01:21:53] Tony: Hours on politics. No?

[01:21:54] Cameron: Hey, you tried to

[01:21:55] Cameron: talk me into doing a couple of pre. review episode so we could [01:22:00] catch up. Everyone could hear what he’s been up to for the last 10 years. But I just knew it was going to turn into politics. And I was like, Oh, I just, I can’t,

[01:22:09] Cameron: you know, but yeah, maybe we’ll get the review out of the way.

[01:22:12] Cameron: Then we can do that. And you know, when he,

[01:22:15] Cameron: when he has a

[01:22:15] Cameron: meltdown, it’s doesn’t matter. That’s too

[01:22:18] Tony: Yeah. Oh, and Miss Edna too. She was lovely and really smart. And, uh, you know, talking with her about her business. I don’t know where that’s at now, but she was doing really well with her

[01:22:28] Tony: geospatial technology business, really interesting. Travelling the

[01:22:34] Tony: world to all

[01:22:35] Tony: sorts of different locations,

[01:22:36] Tony: selling this technology.

[01:22:38] Cameron: Well, he told me they’re, uh, he’s going to D. C., they’re going to D. C. for Thanksgiving and then they’re celebrating their anniversary early because she’s off to Saudi Arabia.

[01:22:47] Cameron: So,

[01:22:47] Tony: Right.

[01:22:48] Cameron: yeah,

[01:22:49] Cameron: apparently still doing well.

[01:22:50] Tony: Yeah.

[01:22:50] Cameron: Um, one, uh, the one last thing

[01:22:52] Cameron: just in After Hours I want to mention was Elon’s Starship.

[01:22:56] Cameron: Launch a couple of days ago, the second

[01:22:58] Cameron: launch, did you see that? [01:23:00]

[01:23:00] Tony: What did they, I love the terminology. What did they

[01:23:02] Tony: call a Rapid A rapid disassembly.

[01:23:04] Tony: event or

[01:23:04] Cameron: Rapid unscheduled disassembly. So for people who didn’t see it, like, it’s, it’s insane, you gotta watch

[01:23:14] Cameron: it. Um, it’s their second

[01:23:15] Cameron: launch attempt, the first one a few

[01:23:17] Cameron: months ago blew up after four minutes. This one blew up

[01:23:21] Cameron: aft

[01:23:22] Tony: that was a success, by the way.

[01:23:24] Cameron: Well, yeah, it was a

[01:23:24] Cameron: success. This one was a

[01:23:25] Cameron: success as

[01:23:26] Cameron: well. Because, well, for a couple of reasons. Number one, I think the first time, seven out of the thirty three engines on it, uh, died during the takeoff process.

[01:23:38] Cameron: This, this time, all 33 powered up successfully, got them into the separation stage where the booster successfully separated from the main capsule. After tracking at 5, 600 kilometers an hour, it was traveling at, the first one didn’t even

[01:23:57] Cameron: reach, um, [01:24:00] uh, what do you call it? We did.

[01:24:02] Cameron: Escape Velocity, thank you.

[01:24:04] Cameron: This one did,

[01:24:05] Cameron: but then when the booster

[01:24:06] Cameron: separated, it experienced a rapid,

[01:24:10] Cameron: unscheduled

[01:24:11] Cameron: disassembly.

[01:24:13] Tony: it

[01:24:13] Cameron: I. e. It blew up.

[01:24:15] Cameron: Magnificently caught on camera too, it’s absolutely magnificent. But it has a self destruct mechanism built into it to do

[01:24:23] Cameron: that.

[01:24:24] Cameron: So if something goes wrong, they don’t want it falling back to earth, so it just blows

[01:24:28] Tony: Right, right.

[01:24:30] Cameron: and that’s their official motto at SpaceX is move fast and blow

[01:24:34] Cameron: shit

[01:24:35] Cameron: up. Um, that’s That’s the

[01:24:37] Cameron: motto. So.

[01:24:39] Tony: yeah, That’s

[01:24:39] Tony: good.

[01:24:40] Cameron: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it’s like, uh, leaving aside what people think of Elon,

[01:24:44] Cameron: etc. Like, this is the largest rocket that humans have ever built. It’s massive, this thing. It’s

[01:24:51] Cameron: enormous. It’s designed to take humans to Mars, this thing.

[01:24:55] Cameron: And, um, like, it’s really breathtaking [01:25:00] as a… Space Junkie, Space Era Kid to see us finally building these things.

[01:25:07] Cameron: It’s an

[01:25:08] Cameron: incredible moment in human,

[01:25:11] Cameron: uh,

[01:25:12] Cameron: progress, scientific

[01:25:13] Cameron: progress. So, I get excited.

[01:25:15] Cameron: I feel giddy watching these

[01:25:17] Cameron: things,

[01:25:17] Cameron: man. It’s really

[01:25:19] Tony: I do until they blow up and then I have a good

[01:25:21] Tony: chuckle, but it’s not even that they blow up, right? Cause NASA would have blown up

[01:25:24] Tony: tons of rockets as well, but in the early

[01:25:27] Tony: days, but it’s when they start calling them rapid

[01:25:29] Tony: disassembly

[01:25:29] Tony: events,

[01:25:30] Tony: it’s just

[01:25:32] Cameron: That’s the comedy in it, right?

[01:25:34] Tony: PR. Yeah. It is a comedy.

[01:25:36] Tony: You reckon it’s comedy

[01:25:36] Tony: or

[01:25:37] Tony: it’s

[01:25:37] Tony: just PR?

[01:25:38] Cameron: no, it’s deliberate. Yeah, this is Elon’s sense of humor. yeah, yeah.

[01:25:41] Cameron: yeah, yeah. Rapid unscheduled disassembly. That’s

[01:25:44] Cameron: his, that’s his sense of humor. He’s making a joke out of the whole thing. He can afford to blow

[01:25:48] Cameron: shit up, you know, it’s

[01:25:49] Cameron: okay. But it did, like, it achieved escape velocity, which was, I

[01:25:54] Cameron: believe,

[01:25:55] Cameron: the objective

[01:25:56] Cameron: for this launch, was to see if they could successfully do that, and they did.[01:26:00]

[01:26:00] Cameron: The fact that it blew up on the way back is no big deal,

[01:26:02] Cameron: so. Anyway, that was exciting. It’s been a crazy week with OpenAI and Starship and

[01:26:09] Cameron: NTD and KAR and

[01:26:12] Cameron: OIL, and it’s been whiplash

[01:26:15] Cameron: all week. I mean, oh my god, what’s

[01:26:17] Cameron: next?

[01:26:18] Tony: Yeah, I think you should call this

[01:26:20] Tony: episode not

[01:26:20] Tony: BRHG, call

[01:26:21] Tony: it, was it Eurasian

[01:26:22] Tony: Fluff?

[01:26:27] Tony: A little bit of

[01:26:27] Tony: Eurasian Fluff.

[01:26:29] Cameron: Oh God, if only I could.

[01:26:33] Cameron: Thanks, Tony. Have a great

[01:26:34] Cameron: week.

[01:26:35] Cameron: We’ll see you on

[01:26:35] Cameron: Saturday.

[01:26:36] Tony: yep,

[01:26:36] Tony: looking forward to it. Thanks,

[01:26:37] Tony: mate.

[01:26:38] Cameron: Me too. Bye.