# Tesla Plunges Most in a Year on Investor Angst Over AI Spending

An episode of [Bloomberg Intelligence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/326301337), 23 Jul 2026, 21 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/7f534b8c-9e91-429a-b102-ae3c00090c6d/05707c0d-8349-4732-ac11-b49001337821/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=0ad812bf-fd15-4012-a18c-ae3c00090c76

Watch Paul and Scarlet LIVE every day on YouTube: http://bit.ly/3vTiACF. Bloomberg Intelligence hosted by Paul Sweeney and Scarlet Fu -Kevin Tynan, Director of Research at The Presidio Group, recaps Tesla earnings. Tesla shares tumbled after disappointing quarterly results raised questions about Elon Musk’s plan to refocus the electric vehicle maker on artificial intelligence and robots. Profit fell short of Wall Street’s estimates for the period as spending on ambitious initiatives surged to $5.8 billion, resulting in Tesla’s first cash burn in two years. -Mandeep Singh, Global Head of Tech Research for Bloomberg Intelligence, recaps Alphabet earnings. Alphabet raised its capital spending forecast to a range of $195 billion to $205 billion this year, up from a previous forecast of $190 billion. The company's quarterly cash flow was negative for the first time since going public, with negative free cash flow of $5.9 billion in the period, and its cloud revenue totaled $24.77 billion, up 82% from a year earlier. -Geetha Ranganathan, Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst on US Media, discusses Comcast earnings. Comcast reported ongoing losses of cable-TV and broadband customers as it prepares to spin out its film and TV business. The company's media division was the clear bright spot in the second quarter, providing a plethora of must-see events that helped boost revenue by 25%. -Madison Muller, Bloomberg News Health Reporter, discusses Eli Lilly’s obesity shot clearing another hurdle. Eli Lilly & Co.'s next-generation weight-loss shot retatrutide didn't increase overall heart risk in a new study, helping dispel concerns over its potential. The company plans to file for US Food and Drug Administration approval early next year, later than investors hoped, due to the complexity of the approval pathway. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. You're listening to the
[0:10] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am
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[0:17] Speaker 1: Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts,
[0:21] Speaker 1: or watch us live on YouTube.
[0:24] Speaker 2: Tessa reported some numbers last night. The profit tumbled despite
[0:28] Speaker 2: strong electric vehicle deliveries in the most recent quarter, and
[0:31] Speaker 2: that's putting pressure on Elon musk Plant to refocus the
[0:34] Speaker 2: company on artificial intelligence and robots. Kevin China joins us here,
[0:39] Speaker 2: director of research for the Presidio Group who's been found
[0:41] Speaker 2: in the auto industry for decades. Here, Kevin, I'm not
[0:45] Speaker 2: sure Tesla's even an auto company anymore. How are you
[0:49] Speaker 2: viewing what you heard last night from Elon and company.
[0:52] Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, there was a lot of automotive type results
[0:57] Speaker 3: in that release, right, and you talked about it. Volume
[1:02] Speaker 3: that you buy is not necessarily demand, right, Like, that's
[1:06] Speaker 3: spend and you saw mix deteriorate, right, and so margins compress.
[1:13] Speaker 3: So selling more things at lower margin is not necessarily
[1:17] Speaker 3: the way, although it is common in the auto industry
[1:19] Speaker 3: for manufacturers, you know, over the decades, and that's how
[1:24] Speaker 3: that happens. Best thing though about that is that you
[1:28] Speaker 3: did not see them compress margins and not get the volume.
[1:32] Speaker 3: At least they got the volume, but it winds up
[1:34] Speaker 3: doing more harm than good to your pricing and your
[1:36] Speaker 3: profit dynamics when that happens.
[1:38] Speaker 4: Though Kevin Tessa has been promising for years a cheap
[1:43] Speaker 4: or affordable EV, a lower cost EV. Does that even
[1:48] Speaker 4: matter to the companies that are priority at this point?
[1:50] Speaker 4: I mean, it feels like the company has so deemphasized
[1:53] Speaker 4: its traditional auto business that people don't care about it,
[1:57] Speaker 4: and I wonder if the company cares about it.
[2:00] Speaker 3: Well, two things Scarlett like one I would say is that, look,
[2:03] Speaker 3: if you're having problems with margins and mix, the answer
[2:07] Speaker 3: is not a more affordable vehicle, right because fair material costs,
[2:12] Speaker 3: input costs, production costs are all inflating. The answer is
[2:16] Speaker 3: not to get to twenty five thousand dollars. That actually
[2:19] Speaker 3: compounds the problem. But yeah, as a passenger car company,
[2:25] Speaker 3: you know, I obviously the narrative is not that and
[2:28] Speaker 3: it's probably not the way forward for this company going forward.
[2:31] Speaker 3: So you know the idea of maybe more models they're
[2:37] Speaker 3: going in the other direction, right models, Model X production
[2:41] Speaker 3: is ceased. Now you're talking about three name plates, Y
[2:45] Speaker 3: three and Cybertruck for what that's worth. So you know,
[2:49] Speaker 3: not acting like an automaker that's putting product in all
[2:52] Speaker 3: segments and able to grow volume that way healthy through
[2:57] Speaker 3: more demand. It's really about mix, price reductions, discounting and
[3:03] Speaker 3: exporting cheaper products to other parts of the world.
[3:06] Speaker 5: Kevin.
[3:07] Speaker 2: I read a really interesting article over the weekend, I
[3:09] Speaker 2: think was in the New York Times about the kind
[3:11] Speaker 2: of the US automakers, how they've pivoted back to what
[3:15] Speaker 2: actually makes money for them, which are trucks and SUVs
[3:19] Speaker 2: and de emphasizing their EV businesses. And while that's good
[3:23] Speaker 2: for near term intermediate term profitability, they fall they run
[3:28] Speaker 2: the risk of falling behind the rest of the world
[3:30] Speaker 2: in terms of EV technology. How do you think the
[3:35] Speaker 2: US auto companies are thinking about that EV strategy longer term?
[3:39] Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, and the products are there, the technology is there,
[3:43] Speaker 3: But to your point, the profitability is and look, and
[3:48] Speaker 3: as a global manufacturer of really anything, you want to
[3:51] Speaker 3: share as many platforms parts as you can. But the
[3:56] Speaker 3: demand profile in each country, if not region, and it's
[4:01] Speaker 3: not the same you know, where money is made here
[4:04] Speaker 3: are on big trucks and SUVs, pickups and SUVs. The
[4:08] Speaker 3: small products that work in maybe Europe or even in China, India,
[4:12] Speaker 3: they don't make sense here and they don't make money.
[4:15] Speaker 3: So the idea that falling behind on EV necessarily matters
[4:21] Speaker 3: if profit is the driver here. You know, I'm not
[4:24] Speaker 3: sure why we need to go toe to toe on
[4:27] Speaker 3: EV anymore than we already are or tried if the
[4:33] Speaker 3: profitability isn't there. I get maybe it's technology shaming, you know,
[4:37] Speaker 3: by the rest of the world that says you're not
[4:39] Speaker 3: keeping up, But it's not what our demand profile in
[4:42] Speaker 3: this country looks like. We're not going to out export China.
[4:47] Speaker 3: We're not a low cost manufacturer. So the idea that
[4:50] Speaker 3: we're going to overtake China in EV, in export or domestically,
[4:55] Speaker 3: it's just not going to happen.
[4:56] Speaker 6: To me.
[4:56] Speaker 3: That fight is already over. So I think manufacturers probably
[5:00] Speaker 3: for the time being, need to be doing what makes
[5:02] Speaker 3: money and enables them to innovate from there.
[5:06] Speaker 4: We already see it with people in California facing six
[5:08] Speaker 4: dollars gallon gas, and now you have the iron war
[5:11] Speaker 4: flaring up again. And oil prices are back up again.
[5:15] Speaker 4: At some point the consumer behavior is going to tip over,
[5:19] Speaker 4: isn't it.
[5:20] Speaker 3: Well, the consumer can only buy what the manufacturer is
[5:23] Speaker 3: building right and selling to the dealerships, and those products
[5:28] Speaker 3: tend to be what makes the manufacturer money. This is
[5:30] Speaker 3: really a push market on the supply side from the manufacturer,
[5:35] Speaker 3: and what you're talking about is the pull side. So ultimately,
[5:39] Speaker 3: and the difference between say the US and China in
[5:41] Speaker 3: terms of EV adoption is subsidizing your manufacturers, which we
[5:46] Speaker 3: don't and probably won't do here. So if you have
[5:49] Speaker 3: a manufacturer looking at an EV platform that loses i
[5:54] Speaker 3: don't know, five figures ten, fifteen thousand dollars per unit,
[5:58] Speaker 3: you just don't have the motivation to build it. Now
[6:01] Speaker 3: the government makes you whole by subsidizing your losses. It's
[6:04] Speaker 3: a different story, which is what happens with Chinese manufacturers.
[6:08] Speaker 3: But ultimately, the automakers are going to go where their
[6:11] Speaker 3: profit is, and evs, even for Tesla, have proven that
[6:15] Speaker 3: they're just not there. We don't own any of the
[6:18] Speaker 3: supply chain either, China does, so the idea that this
[6:21] Speaker 3: gets more cost effective going forward is also a difficult
[6:25] Speaker 3: case to make stay with us.
[6:27] Speaker 4: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
[6:33] Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
[6:37] Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
[6:40] Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
[6:44] Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
[6:47] Speaker 2: All right, let's talk technology. Google reported numbers after the close.
[6:50] Speaker 2: The kids call it alphabet, but those of us who
[6:53] Speaker 2: were there at the beginning, we're sticking with Google and.
[6:57] Speaker 6: The Capex numbers.
[6:58] Speaker 2: First of all, the operating numbs looked good to me,
[7:00] Speaker 2: don't know, but the Capex raised maybe spookings some people.
[7:03] Speaker 2: And Indh Sing he's part of that whole technology cabal there.
[7:07] Speaker 2: He runs it for Bloomberg Intelligence. And you give us
[7:10] Speaker 2: your overview of kind of what you heard what you
[7:12] Speaker 2: saw from Google last night.
[7:14] Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, the entire call was about Google Cloud
[7:18] Speaker 6: and TPUs. Not even one question on the Core ads
[7:22] Speaker 6: search business, which is surprising, you know, given how the
[7:26] Speaker 6: calls used to be. But look, they talked about how
[7:30] Speaker 6: supply constraints remain when it comes to AI data center capacity.
[7:35] Speaker 6: They're actually renting data center compute from third party providers
[7:41] Speaker 6: despite all this more compute than had Google for Yeah,
[7:45] Speaker 6: but they want more because right now anybody who was
[7:50] Speaker 6: early to invest in power and computing and data center
[7:56] Speaker 6: capacity is looking like a genius.
[7:58] Speaker 2: Who are those people?
[8:00] Speaker 6: These hyperscalers?
[8:01] Speaker 2: So Google's renting space from.
[8:03] Speaker 6: From SpaceX potentially Meta. Again they didn't specify.
[8:07] Speaker 4: But Meta has data centers to spare like, That's what
[8:10] Speaker 4: I don't understand.
[8:11] Speaker 6: They don't have a model which is comparable to an
[8:15] Speaker 6: anthropic or Gemini, And so right now they are following
[8:20] Speaker 6: the SpaceX playbook, which is if you rent your one
[8:23] Speaker 6: gigabot compute, you can generate up to a twenty billion
[8:26] Speaker 6: dollars in rental revenue just by renting the compute, nothing
[8:29] Speaker 6: by being a landlord, by being a landlord for your compute.
[8:32] Speaker 4: Yeah, at what point is investing in all this too much?
[8:36] Speaker 4: I mean, right now, investors have been following this guideline
[8:39] Speaker 4: of as long as I see a return on this,
[8:41] Speaker 4: as long as it's paying off. But at some point
[8:43] Speaker 4: is it just too much and investors will walk?
[8:46] Speaker 6: I think so we will hit that point. But Google
[8:48] Speaker 6: also said they will be significantly raising their compute for
[8:53] Speaker 6: twenty twenty seven, so there is a Foliar guide for
[8:56] Speaker 6: twenty six by about ten fifteen billion dollars at the
[8:59] Speaker 6: mid point, and then they said twenty twenty seven would
[9:02] Speaker 6: be a significant increase. Now, my interpretation of significant is
[9:06] Speaker 6: it's at least fifty percent, because this year was one
[9:08] Speaker 6: hundred percent. Wow, their capex doubled in twenty twenty six.
[9:13] Speaker 4: Fifty percent increase equals significant increase at least.
[9:17] Speaker 6: Yes, So it's it's not changing anytime soon to your question. Yeah,
[9:22] Speaker 6: all right.
[9:22] Speaker 2: So I'm looking at the FA function on the Bloomberg terminal, folks,
[9:26] Speaker 2: which gives you a financial analysis. That's what it stands
[9:28] Speaker 2: for capex for this company Google in twenty twenty two,
[9:33] Speaker 2: capex was thirty billion in twenty twenty six, expected to
[9:38] Speaker 2: be almost call one hundred ninety billion going to too
[9:41] Speaker 2: eighty next year. There ain't no free cash flow oft
[9:44] Speaker 2: for this company, which was a free cash flow juggernaut.
[9:47] Speaker 6: Yeah, they were negative free cash flow even for this quarter,
[9:50] Speaker 6: first time ever, right, first time ever. So and they
[9:53] Speaker 6: just did an equity raise eighty five billion dollars. So,
[9:57] Speaker 6: and the justification is, we we'll invest significantly in training
[10:02] Speaker 6: our own model Gemini for and you know, the cloud
[10:07] Speaker 6: business really is super strong. So eighty two percent growth
[10:10] Speaker 6: when you have one hundred billion dollar business, it's like,
[10:14] Speaker 6: show me any other company that's growing eighty percent at
[10:17] Speaker 6: one hundred billion dollar rundering.
[10:19] Speaker 4: Stay with us more from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
[10:26] Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
[10:30] Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
[10:33] Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
[10:36] Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
[10:41] Speaker 2: Let's switch gears towards the media space. Lots of news
[10:43] Speaker 2: there as always. We could talk to Githa rang Andathan
[10:45] Speaker 2: every day if we wanted to, but she's got a
[10:47] Speaker 2: day job. She covers the media stocks for Bloomberg Intelligence. Hey, Keith,
[10:51] Speaker 2: let's just start with Comcast A they reported numbers here,
[10:55] Speaker 2: give us like a couple of notes on on their quarter.
[10:57] Speaker 2: But more importantly, what do you think the strategy is
[11:00] Speaker 2: of the Comcast company going forward?
[11:02] Speaker 5: Yeah? Thanks so much, Paul for Comcasts. Really, as you
[11:05] Speaker 5: pointed out, it's more about the strategy than the second
[11:07] Speaker 5: quarter results. But just a few you know, high points
[11:10] Speaker 5: from the results. So remember they are the largest broadband
[11:14] Speaker 5: provider in the United States, they have about a twenty
[11:16] Speaker 5: five percent share of the market, but that share has been,
[11:19] Speaker 5: you know, rapidly declining, and we continue to see that
[11:22] Speaker 5: in the numbers today. So they again lost broadband subscribers.
[11:26] Speaker 5: And really, I mean, I think what investors are focused on, Paul,
[11:28] Speaker 5: is that you know, this story is not getting any better.
[11:32] Speaker 5: So over the past four years, we've seen intense competition
[11:34] Speaker 5: from the telecoms, both on the fixed wireless side as
[11:37] Speaker 5: well as fiber, and then now this year you have
[11:40] Speaker 5: this new competition with Starlink, and you know, just with
[11:45] Speaker 5: kind of the expansion in V three satellites next year,
[11:48] Speaker 5: the expansion in broadband capacity, there is so much fear
[11:52] Speaker 5: on the street that Starlink is going to become another
[11:55] Speaker 5: big competitor for cable, and so just the story doesn't
[11:59] Speaker 5: get any better now. Comcast, what they've done is they
[12:02] Speaker 5: have altered their go to market strategy by becoming much
[12:06] Speaker 5: more competitive in terms of broadband pricing. But that obviously
[12:09] Speaker 5: has resulted in EBITDA getting crushed, and so we saw
[12:13] Speaker 5: it again fall about six percent this quarter. Again they're
[12:17] Speaker 5: pointing to the story getting slightly better in the second
[12:20] Speaker 5: half but again it's a little bit of a wait
[12:22] Speaker 5: and watch longer term. I just don't think investors are
[12:26] Speaker 5: optimistic about this cable broadband turnaround at all.
[12:29] Speaker 4: Okay, so it's kind of like managing the decline of
[12:32] Speaker 4: its business right now, it's main business. What's is the
[12:36] Speaker 4: company offering up any kind of growth story for investors
[12:40] Speaker 4: to get excited about.
[12:42] Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm glad you asked that. Actually they did that
[12:44] Speaker 5: just three weeks ago, Scarletts. So you know, they are
[12:48] Speaker 5: an interesting company because they're a vertically integrated media company.
[12:52] Speaker 5: So of course broadband makes up eighty five percent of
[12:54] Speaker 5: their ebit dah, but they do have a great media
[12:57] Speaker 5: business with NBC. They announced plans just a few weeks
[13:01] Speaker 5: ago to actually separate out that media business, which is,
[13:04] Speaker 5: you know, the NBC NBC Universal business along with Sky,
[13:08] Speaker 5: into a separate company, which is supposed to happen sometime
[13:11] Speaker 5: next year. Now, the whole story here has been that
[13:14] Speaker 5: with you know, the whole Warner Brothers bidding war. Media
[13:17] Speaker 5: assets have actually they're actually being really played up. And
[13:21] Speaker 5: if you look at comcasts NBC for instance, you know,
[13:24] Speaker 5: just the collection of assets, it's it's a stellar collection
[13:27] Speaker 5: of assets. And it almost resembles a Disney, if you will,
[13:30] Speaker 5: because they are one of the few media companies that
[13:32] Speaker 5: actually has theme parks very similar to Disney. Has Studio,
[13:35] Speaker 5: has a broadcast network, you know, had some cable networks,
[13:38] Speaker 5: and has Peacock the streaming platform. And so the big
[13:41] Speaker 5: argument here was, you know, cable multiples have actually declined.
[13:44] Speaker 5: They've they've had so they've gone from you know, ten
[13:47] Speaker 5: times EBITDA just about three four years ago to five times,
[13:51] Speaker 5: and NBC, because it's being clubbed with Comcast, is suffering here.
[13:55] Speaker 5: And so if you look at Disney, for instance, you know,
[13:57] Speaker 5: Disney trads it about nine ten times. And so the
[13:59] Speaker 5: question was, you know, why are we punishing NBC for
[14:02] Speaker 5: cable sport performance. So I think investors definitely are happy
[14:05] Speaker 5: about that because it now kind of shines NBC in
[14:08] Speaker 5: this new light and it definitely gives them some strategic
[14:10] Speaker 5: optionality as well.
[14:12] Speaker 4: Stay with us more from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
[14:19] Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
[14:23] Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
[14:26] Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
[14:29] Speaker 1: you get your podcasts or watch US live on YouTube.
[14:33] Speaker 2: Looking at the healthcare space here, Eli Lilly, its next
[14:37] Speaker 2: generation weight loss shot, has cleared another hurdle that is
[14:41] Speaker 2: just a massive market that continues to show tremendous growth.
[14:44] Speaker 2: Madison Muller joins us here. She's a healthcare reporter for
[14:47] Speaker 2: Bloomberg News. What's going on in Eli Lilly medicine.
[14:50] Speaker 7: We had an important update from Lily today about when
[14:52] Speaker 7: it plans to file for regulatory approval for its next generation,
[14:57] Speaker 7: next generation weight loss shot read a true Tide, which
[14:59] Speaker 7: is going to be a pretty big product for Lily
[15:03] Speaker 7: if it ends up being approved. Already, there are a
[15:05] Speaker 7: lot of people seeking out black market versions of this
[15:08] Speaker 7: drug just because they've heard about all of the potentially
[15:11] Speaker 7: incredible effects, everything from thirty percent up to thirty percent
[15:16] Speaker 7: weight loss to liver impacts and all of these other
[15:19] Speaker 7: potential health benefits like anti inflammation and all of these things.
[15:24] Speaker 7: So Lily said that they are going to apply for
[15:26] Speaker 7: FDA approval sometime in the first quarter of twenty twenty seven,
[15:29] Speaker 7: which is a little bit later than some analysts had expected,
[15:33] Speaker 7: but that's just because the data package and the filing
[15:36] Speaker 7: that they have to put together is so big.
[15:38] Speaker 2: So how will this be materially different or better than
[15:42] Speaker 2: what's on the market right now? Because people are getting
[15:45] Speaker 2: really substantial weight loss and it seems to be working already.
[15:49] Speaker 2: What's this new and going to do?
[15:50] Speaker 7: Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean zep Bound, which is
[15:52] Speaker 7: Lily's other weight loss shot, in Wagovi, which is a
[15:54] Speaker 7: Nova Noordisk product, are really good and like you said,
[15:57] Speaker 7: people are getting a lot of success with those. Now
[16:00] Speaker 7: read a true Tide, which that's the sort of generic
[16:02] Speaker 7: chemical name. It doesn't have a brand name yet because
[16:04] Speaker 7: it's not approved. Combines three different gut hormones, so it's
[16:08] Speaker 7: GLP one, which we've all heard so much about, plus
[16:11] Speaker 7: another one called glucagon and another called GIP. Basically, it
[16:15] Speaker 7: just supercharges the drug a little bit. It targets some
[16:19] Speaker 7: different receptors and is maybe better for things like removing
[16:23] Speaker 7: fat from the liver and other health impacts. And there
[16:27] Speaker 7: are a certain percentage of people that don't see success
[16:30] Speaker 7: on the currently available GLP one, So for people that
[16:33] Speaker 7: need that higher degree of weight loss, this is something
[16:36] Speaker 7: that could be a really good product for them.
[16:38] Speaker 2: Can you explain to me? I see the ads all
[16:40] Speaker 2: over the place, Serena Williams, How are these Are they generics?
[16:45] Speaker 2: Are they compounds? How are they different from the stuff
[16:48] Speaker 2: you have to get a prescription for.
[16:49] Speaker 7: Yeah, well, at one point, a lot of those ads
[16:52] Speaker 7: that you're seeing from companies like Row and Hymns and Hers,
[16:55] Speaker 7: those were for compounded products. So those are products that
[16:58] Speaker 7: are made by compounding pharmacies, and they're not exactly the
[17:02] Speaker 7: same as the drugs that the pharmaceutical companies sell. They're
[17:05] Speaker 7: not approved or reviewed by the FDA in sort of
[17:09] Speaker 7: the same way. But a lot of the telehealth companies
[17:13] Speaker 7: have recently moved into selling the brand name medications. They
[17:16] Speaker 7: were really pushing the compounded versions when there were supply shortages.
[17:21] Speaker 7: Now those supply shortages have ended, they've moved to selling
[17:23] Speaker 7: the brand name medications. However, there are still a lot
[17:26] Speaker 7: of compounding pharmacies and a lot of smaller telehealth companies
[17:29] Speaker 7: that have continued to sell these cheaper compounded ones, even
[17:33] Speaker 7: though the FDA has said that that's not allowed anymore.
[17:35] Speaker 2: Interesting, what's the where are we with the oral dosage
[17:41] Speaker 2: that's in the market now right?
[17:43] Speaker 7: Yeah, it is, which was a big development this year, Wogov.
[17:47] Speaker 7: There's a Wogov pill. There's also another pill from Lily
[17:50] Speaker 7: called Fondeo. Both of those are selling really really well.
[17:54] Speaker 7: People are I mean, especially the Wogov pill has been
[17:57] Speaker 7: a huge product for Novo, which is something that really needed.
[18:00] Speaker 7: Novo has fallen behind Lily sort of in the weight
[18:03] Speaker 7: loss drug race, even though they were the ones that
[18:05] Speaker 7: really created this modern weight loss market with their products
[18:08] Speaker 7: so Zepic and WGOV. Lily leapfrogged them with some more
[18:11] Speaker 7: effective options and also just understanding how to sell products
[18:15] Speaker 7: directly to patients and build these sort of telehealth or
[18:19] Speaker 7: online infrastructures that were really appealing to patients. So they
[18:22] Speaker 7: saw that opportunity and moved into it quickly, helped them
[18:25] Speaker 7: sort of surpass Novo. But now Novo's come back with
[18:28] Speaker 7: this oral version of Agov that's extremely popular, and so
[18:32] Speaker 7: that's been helping them as of late. But it sort
[18:34] Speaker 7: of remains to be seen in the long run how
[18:36] Speaker 7: the pills will end up stacking up to the orals
[18:38] Speaker 7: because we are seeing or sorry to the shots, because
[18:41] Speaker 7: we are still seeing a lot of demand for the shots.
[18:44] Speaker 2: So it's almost I mean, who doesn't take a weight
[18:49] Speaker 2: loss drug that could in fact benefit from a weight
[18:53] Speaker 2: loss drug. What are the hurdles still?
[18:55] Speaker 7: Is it still cost or still is cost in the
[18:59] Speaker 7: sense that insurance companies are still not widely covering these
[19:02] Speaker 7: which is pretty different than other chronic conditions. So the
[19:06] Speaker 7: insurance landscape is still pretty tough for people, and that
[19:09] Speaker 7: can be a barrier if they I mean, the price
[19:11] Speaker 7: when you're paying out of pocket is still a couple
[19:13] Speaker 7: hundred dollars a month, So that's still unaffordable for a
[19:15] Speaker 7: lot of Americans, especially right now. And we've not seen
[19:19] Speaker 7: sort of the same insurance pickup that we would see
[19:21] Speaker 7: with other chronic health conditions and that we would sort
[19:24] Speaker 7: of expect in this market. So that's been a barrier
[19:26] Speaker 7: to entry. And one positive thing with that is that
[19:30] Speaker 7: Medicare recently started covering these drugs for people sixty five
[19:34] Speaker 7: and older with certain health conditions, so that's sort of
[19:36] Speaker 7: expected to open access to potentially millions more people. But
[19:40] Speaker 7: it's still like, you know, the number or the percent
[19:43] Speaker 7: of people that actually take these drugs that could benefit
[19:45] Speaker 7: from them is still pretty low.
[19:47] Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean, you see somebody out on the
[19:49] Speaker 2: street that you would think could benefit and you wonder
[19:51] Speaker 2: why haven't they yeah, and I guess it's cost primarily.
[19:55] Speaker 2: Right now is the issue? Do the compounded Are they
[19:58] Speaker 2: maturely cheaper the compounds.
[20:00] Speaker 7: At this point? Not really. I mean at one point yes,
[20:03] Speaker 7: because people were paying out a pocket for the list
[20:05] Speaker 7: price of the drug, which drugs, which was over one
[20:07] Speaker 7: thousand dollars a month. The drug makers have substantially reduced
[20:12] Speaker 7: the cash pay costs, so now it's like two hundred
[20:15] Speaker 7: dollars a month and up, sort of depending on the
[20:17] Speaker 7: dose that you're on, which is much much cheaper. And
[20:20] Speaker 7: that's sort of around the same price as these compounded medications,
[20:23] Speaker 7: because usually for compounded medications, you're getting them from a
[20:26] Speaker 7: telehealth company, so you're paying a subscription fee plus the
[20:29] Speaker 7: cost of the drug ends up being sort of the same.
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