FRIDAY WRAP: VW’s ex CEO trial, Hasbro is a healthcare company, shorting testosterone, and big oil curriculum

Introduction

LIVE from the bottom of your ESG-approved compost bin, where even your egg shells are voting against shareholder proposals, it’s a Business Pants Friday Show here at September 6th Studios, featuring one of your favorites: Ari the data queen, Jessie the money whisperer, AnalystHole Matt Moscardi. On today’s weekly wrap up: beer drinkers are officially racist; porn is better than google; jim cramer rips off freefloat; and your big oil CEO might be firing your kid’s professor 

Today’s show is brought to you by freefloatanalytics.com - everything you ever wanted to know about who runs public companies, all free.

Story of the Week (DR):

1. Volvo gives up plan to sell only EVs by 2030

2. Molson Coors pumps the brakes on DEI practices

1. Didn’t we already do this joke? That was Ford: 28 execs/15 directors: 2 black guys. Here it’s one white South African CEO dude named Gavin; 0 of 9 black executives; 2 of 14 black directors; but 4 members of the Molson and Coors’ families (80% influence; all dudes)

2. Hell, even Danish beer company Carlsberg has a black person on their board and this is from a country where the following google search phrase is not uncommon: “Are there black people in Denmark?” Carlsberg is beer. And family-owned (Carlseberg foundation 77%). So are they next?

3. Ex-Volkswagen CEO to finally face trial nine years after ‘dieselgate’ scandal rocked auto industry MM

1. Martin Winterkorn

2. VW admitted in 2015 that it had installed software to rig emissions levels in millions of vehicles worldwide, setting off one of Germany’s biggest post-war industrial scandals.

3. Winterkorn faces charges including fraud over the use of the so-called defeat devices, which made cars appear less polluting in lab tests than they were on the road, and could be jailed for 10 years if convicted.

4. Trump calls for regulatory bloodbath—asks Musk to lead task force on ‘drastic cuts’

1. Elon Musk Deletes Nazi Apologist Tweet After Near-Universal Backlash

2. Elon Musk Suggests That Government Should Be Replaced by Dudes With High Testosterone

3. X is banned in Brazil and China, but Elon Musk is only in a spat with one. The secret? Tesla

Goodliest of the Week (MM, pretending to be AB):

1. After another Boeing letdown, NASA isn’t ready to buy more Starliner missions

1. Boeing COULD HAVE earned $2bn on its Starliner contract going forward from the US government - nice work Calhoun!

2. Study: Playing Dungeons & Dragons helps autistic players in social interactions DR

1. Go long Hasbro as a healthcare company!

2. J&J makes Risperidone for schizophrenia, bipolar, and autism and Bristol Myers Squibb makes Abilify for the same thing - costing insurance millions (billions? There’s no breakout data for this, but estimates suggest $5-10k per year on medications per patient in the US) when they could just play D&D for a $50 starter set

3. OnlyFans users spent $6.6 billion on creators in 2023 as more fans signed up to pay for content and messages

1. It’s hard not to love that porn figured out how to pay its creators while “savory” social media just pays their founder fetishes

2. YouTube paid creators $70bn over 3 years - so like $23bn per year

3. Meanwhile, a porn site with 300m users and an estimated 2m creators (vs. YouTube’s 2.5bn users and 62m creators) paid out $6.6bn in 2023 alone

1. Populist porn math: $3,300/creator vs. $370/creator

2. 1,250 artists on Spotify made $1m+ in 2023… out of 11m artists

4. Leonid Radvinsky has estimated net worth around $2-3bn, with ~$300m/yr in dividend payments as CEO of Fenix = 90,900:1 CEO to average creator ratio

5. Sergey and Larry are worth ~$125bn each with ~$300m/yr each for $600m/yr dividends = 1,621,600:1 CEO to average creator ratio

4. Jim Cramer compares his favorite stocks to his favorite players in annual fantasy draft

Assholiest of the Week (MM):

1. Testosterone

1. Why men get more credit than women for doing the same work, according to a business school professor

1. As a case in point, consider the experience of Joan Roughgarden. Joan transitioned from male to female during her tenure as a biology professor at Stanford University. When Roughgarden’s colleagues perceived her as a man, they took her competence as a given. After her transition, though, Joan found she had “to establish competence to an extent that men never have to. [Men are] assumed to be competent until proven otherwise, whereas a woman is assumed to be incompetent until she proves otherwise,” she recalled. “I remember going on a drive with a man. He assumed I couldn’t read a map.”

2. Elon Musk Suggests That Government Should Be Replaced by Dudes With High Testosterone

1. Problems associated with artificially high testosterone levels in men include:

1. low sperm counts, shrinking of the testicles and impotence

2. heart muscle damage and increased risk of heart attack

3. prostate enlargement with difficulty urinating

4. liver disease

5. acne

6. fluid retention with swelling of the legs and feet

7. weight gain, perhaps related in part to increased appetite

8. high blood pressure and cholesterol

9. insomnia

10. headaches

11. increased muscle mass

12. increased risk of blood clots

13. stunted growth in adolescents

14. uncharacteristically aggressive behavior (although not well studied or clearly proven)

15. mood swings, euphoria, irritability, impaired judgment, delusions.

2. MEN AS AN INVESTABLE ASSET CLASS?

1. This isn’t a joke - there are 69… yes, 69… US companies with zero women on the board and another 10 that have women with 0% influence

1. Nathan’s Famous hot dog board - 10 directors, 1 woman, 9 men… female influence on the board = 0% according to FFA data

1. ZERO people of color

2. Insiders own 30% of the company (all white dudes), but the largest external manager GAMCO/Gabelli (14% of shares) PMs are all men that hold Nathan’s - men holding men!

2. Oglethorpe Power is my new favorite MANCOMPANY - the board:

3. Wheels Up Experience is 38% owned by Delta and found a whopping TWELVE dudes to put on the board without ONE woman - and that’s AFTER refreshment in 2024

3. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says women founders say they can't go 'founder mode' like men and that it needs to change

1. Women can’t go “founder mode” because it’s a fake thing where aggressive asshole men micromanage and scream out every underling - and to talk about “founder mode” like it’s a solution to a problem is the most male thing you can do

2. Only a man would think “I need to ignore consensus and community and just make everyone do what I want if I want to succeed”, and then NAME IT something innocuous like “founder mode” when really it’s a code word for “college dropout manbaby who wants what he wants when he wants it”

2. Daddy

1. Larry Ellison Will Control Paramount After Deal, Filing Shows

1. David Ellison looked like he was buying it, but filing shows Daddy Larry will actually control 77% of National Amusements, the controlling shareholder of Paramount, when the deal is completed

2. David can console himself on his father’s Hawaiian island, L’anai (Larry owns 98% of the island), or maybe he can get a job at Oracle (Larry still owns 42% of the outstanding shares), or maybe he can work in the mailroom at Twitter (Larry spent $1bn to invest in Musk taking it private)

2. Tyson's finance chief is out of the job. The Tyson heir got the gig at 32, making him the youngest Fortune 500 CFO

1. The interim CFO Curt Calaway will now be the ACTUAL CFO, but I’m not sure he’s the right fit because he only had 11 years experience as an auditor followed by 18 years experience in finance at Tyson.

2. John “Is this not my bed?” Tyson on the other hand graduated in 2019 and was handed a job at Tyson where he started as the “Chief Sustainability Officer” and got board seat at Winrock International and is on the Council of Foreign Relations

3. Thanks Daddy John H

3. CEO pinky swears DR

1. Albertsons and Kroger CEOs tell skeptical government that grocery mega merger won’t lead to store closures and higher prices

1. Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen (29% influence) and Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran (12% influence) swore they wouldn’t raise prices

1. Sankaran is one of the lowest influence CEOs (12%) in our data - there are FIVE board members ahead of him 

2. They WILL give a $4bn dividend to investors, though - and last year Sankaran said if the merger didn’t happen they’d close stores, but NOW they’re in great financial health so they PROMISE they won’t do that, pinky swear

1. Kroger board TSR batting .488, EBITDA a whopping .202

2. Albertson’s board TSR batting .459, EBITDA a whopping .371

Exhausting-est of the Week (DR, pretending to be JS):

1. How Big Oil’s big money influences climate research MM

1. A new study offers the first comprehensive look at the ties between fossil fuel companies and universities

2. The problem goes beyond funding university research centers and academic posts. Fossil fuel industry executives sit on schools’ governing boards, sponsor scholarships and conferences, and seek to influence courses and curricula.

2. CEOs as “economists” and “legal experts”

1. Uber CEO Warns of Economic Downfall as Seattle Sets $26.40 Minimum Wage

1. Dara Khosrowshahi: had to start scrolling to find his name.

2. Telegram chief Durov denounces his arrest in France as 'misguided'

3. Rich bro asshats controlling our media: Larry Ellison Will Control Paramount After Deal, Filing 

Headliniest of the Week

1. DR: X global affairs head Nick Pickles resigns DR MM

2. MM: Country star Thomas Rhett says traveling without his wife helps him be a better husband and dad

1. The worst Taco Bell in the US is in Florida, a new report says

Who Won the Week?

1. DR: Nick Pickles: Top Musk lobbyist ‘considers entering British politics’ after quitting X

2. AB: 

3. MM: John R. Tyson - FINALLY he can get back into sustainability

Predictions

1. DR: Volkswagen responds to the trial of former CEO Martin Winterkorn by laying off 10% of its global workforce and reducing its commitment to EV manufacturing

2. AB: 

3. MM: Albertson’s and Krogers merge to form “Krogertson’s” and immediately raise prices

OUTRO

• New podcast Shareholder Primacy - first episode drops Wednesday on Tesla

• Data Drops - this week we dropped the General Mills Team report from our Proxy Countdown podcast and our LAM Research Knowledge Map data from our Tuesday Business Pants show