Compair the pair – CEOs go head to head | Quartr Reporting Season

Bryce: [00:00:53] Welcome to another episode of Equity Mates, a podcast that follows our journey of investing, whether you're an absolute beginner or approaching Warren Buffett status. Our aim is to help break down your barriers from beginning to dividend. My name is Bryce, and as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy Ren. How are you going? 

Alec: [00:01:09] I'm very good. Bryce in AFL, they say the third quarter is the Championship quarter and this is our third episode with quarter. Yes. So the Championship 

Bryce: [00:01:21] quarter, yeah, that's it. Third and final episode with quarter hits their website Q U a dot com and download the app.

Alec: [00:01:31] Just go straight to the App Store. 

Bryce: [00:01:32] Yeah, go straight to the App Store. It's an awesome app. As you've heard over the last couple of weeks, we've been listening to some of the earnings calls from companies around the world. We've touched on supply chains. We've had a look at some of the tech companies that had fear in their voices, 

Alec: [00:01:49] just tech companies such as tech companies that have fallen 40 percent or more. 

Bryce: [00:01:53] Yes. And today, where we're going to close it all out by hearing from, we're going to be comparing the pair. 

Alec: [00:02:01] Compare the pen. If you're not listening in Australia, a very famous ad campaign by the retirement industry asked Australians to compare the pair when they're thinking about what retirement account to sign up with. Well, we're going to compare the pair when it comes to rivals say today, and we're going to listen to rival CEOs talking about the same subject. So we've got an all star line up today. We've got the CEO of Tesla and the CEO of G.M. talking about driverless cars. We've got the CEO of Nike and the CEO of Adidas. I was calling at Adidas before the earnings call, so we're learning so much to be talking about changes in their businesses. We've got Visa and MasterCard going head to head and then we've got a triple header to close things out and Nvidia, Microsoft and Medha all sharing their views on the metaverse.

Bryce: [00:02:56] Love it. Can't wait for this one. A lot to get through, so make sure you check out Quarter. It's one of those apps that just really can help you on your investing journey. Conference calls, earnings calls, transcripts, analyst reports. All in the one app, all free, and they've done a heap of work on the UX compared to when we were looking at it this time last year. So nice one quarter. Make sure you go and check it out. The other good 

Alec: [00:03:19] thing is that whenever there's like a big corporate action, there will generally be an investor call. So when Afterpay got acquired by Square, yeah, that was an earnings call that we could listen to on the quarter up a but last week, Ford announced it was splitting itself in half, and as we're preparing for this episode, we could listen to the Ford team explain that. So one thing, as well as the quarterly earnings calls, whenever something big happens, they'll generally get on a call and explain it to investors. And now we can listen to that as well, which is really convenient. So, yeah, let's not talk about Ford, because it's not that interesting when interesting corporate actions happen. You can also listen to it on the quarter. 

Bryce: [00:03:59] That's it. Now, before we jump into it, you would have heard at the top of the show that we are IPO ing. Our initial party offering is here and that is Fin Fest. We're incredibly excited. Head to Equity Mates dot com slash fin fest to register your interest for what we are terming Australia's biggest finance festival. Yeah, we're really excited to actually turn finance events on its head and put on a bit of a party, but also an event that will inspire you, empower you, enable you to take that next step on your investing journey. And that's what we're going to say. For now, we've got guests lined up. We've got an awesome venue. Tickets will be going on sale soon and we'll be announcing who will also be headlining from a DJI point of view. I think it's going to be Ren, but he hasn't yet 

Alec: [00:04:46] said, Yeah, I've got some vinyls. I won't be doing any of that, say DJI or any of that. I'll just I'll be deejaying the old school wise, so you won't want to miss that. Fest is powered by stakes are big thanks to them for supporting the event. Yeah, we can't wait. It's going to be so much fun. 

Bryce: [00:05:03] Nice one will. Yes, thanks to stake, we're pumped Equity Mates dot com slash film fest. It's going to be in your show notes. Register now and we'll keep you updated. As things progress, it's going to be awesome. 

Alec: [00:05:12] So Bryce, let's get stuck into this episode and we're comparing the pair. I'm not going to ask you to choose your favourite CEO out of the pair. Will that everyone listening make their own decisions? But let's start at the top of the mountain with the CEO that gets the most press whose Twitter moves markets and market regulators. Elon Musk, Tesla. A guy. And we were going to do these two companies on electric cars and just like what's going on there? But something caught our eye caught out. Er, I should say in both of these earnings calls. And that's the shift. Driverless cars. So let's start with Elon, let's hear his view on where Tesla is. And then here where he thinks we're going in terms of driverless cars. 

Elon Musk: [00:06:04] Just to recap 2021, it was a breakthrough year for Tesla and for electric vehicles in general. And while we battle and everyone did with supply chain challenges through the year, we managed to grow our volumes by nearly 90 percent last year. This level of growth didn't happen by coincidence. It was a result of ingenuity and hard work across multiple teams throughout the company. Additionally, we reached the highest operating margin in the industry in the last one year quarter at over 14 percent operating margin, largely thanks to a 5.5 million but $5.5 billion of. So think about it now putting a billion dollars of Gabinete better income in 2021. Our accumulated profitability since the inception of the company became positive, which I think makes us a real company at this point. This is a critical milestone for the company. So after an exceptional year, we shift our focus to the future of Texas and Berlin. So we've begun production at both Texas and Berlin. We started that last quarter, but that's not the most important thing. We're focussed more on when to get to volume production and when can we deliver cars to customers. But I think it is worth noting that we've and as the internet has observed, we've been making quite a few cars in Texas and Berlin enforcement being so good in Texas. We're building the Model Y's with the structural battery pack and the body 680 cells, and we will start delivering Afterpay certification of the vehicle, which should be fairly soon. Capacity expansion will continue to maximising output of each factory and building new factories and new locations in the future. Although we're not ready to announce any new locations on this call, but but we will get through 2020 to look at new locations and probably be able to announce new locations. Towards the end of this year, I expect in 2022, supply chain will continue to be the fundamental emitter of output across all factories. So the the chip shortage, while better than last year, is still still an issue and there are there are multiple supply chain technologies. And last year was difficult to predict and hopefully this year will be smooth sailing. But you will see what you do for an encore to 2021 2020. Nonetheless, we do expect to see significant growth in 2020 to 2021 know comfortably above 50 percent growth in 2022. A full self-driving So over time, we think Full Self-driving will become the most important source of profitability for Tesla. Actually, if you run the numbers on robotaxi, it's kind of nutty, but it's not good for free from a financial standpoint. And I think we are completely confident at this point that it will be achieved and know. My personal guess is that we will achieve full self-driving this year with with without a safety level significantly greater than three percent. So the cars in the fleet essentially becoming self-driving via software update, I think might might end up being the biggest increase in asset value of any asset class in history. We shall see. I also have a profound impact on improving safety and on accelerating the world towards sustainable energy through vastly better civilisation. 

Bryce: [00:09:27] Well, Ren look, Elon, love the guy. Some pretty amazing stuff in there. He fully expects to achieve full self-driving this year this year. Now I need to. I need to stress that Elon is very good at saying that they'll do things this year and dragging that out. 

Alec: [00:09:48] I need to stress that Elon is very good at doing things which many people think couldn't be done. Yes, reusable rockets electric vehicles may ring some bells, so 

Bryce: [00:10:00] I'm not saying it's not possible. I fully anticipate that he will deliver it this year. Maybe not. 

Alec: [00:10:06] But yeah, I don't see. I don't think this year, but like, it's getting close up. Well, before we move on to Jim, that line that he thinks the shift to self-driving might be the biggest increase in asset value of any asset class in history, and to think that the way that Tesla has designed their fleet, that it's just going to be a software update. Yeah, that they just push. 

Bryce: [00:10:29] Yeah, that's nuts. 

Alec: [00:10:31] It's pretty. It's pretty incredible. Yeah. So that's let's compare the pair. That's Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO, talking about driverless cars. So let's move to the GM CEO Mary Barra, who is talking about their self-driving subsidiary cruise. 

General Motors: [00:10:52] I'll be here before we get into our 2021 results and 2022 outlook, I want to start with some exciting news from cruise, which is one of our most significant growth opportunities. Kyle Duncan Gill West and the entire cruise team are doing great work and they just delivered a key milestone and the drive to commercialisation to commercialise cruise ride share service. As Kyle has shared, cruise team members have been taking fully driverless rides in San Francisco since November to demonstrate and refine the software and hardware ecosystem we have created together. In fact, they have logged over 20000 miles and completed more than 600 trip. I wrote in a driverless cruise a couple of weeks ago, and I can tell you it was the highlight of my career as an engineer and as the leader of General Motors. The ride is smooth and competent. It's like having an experienced and attentive driver behind the wheel. Now, as Cruise announced this morning, it is inviting members of the public to sign up for their own driverless rides through a waitlist on the cruise website. This is the first truly driverless ride health service offered to members of the public in a dense urban environment. To maximise its learnings, cruise will prioritise use cases that are all natural fits for autonomous ride sharing. This major milestone brings cruise even closer to offering its first paid rides and generating $50 billion in annual revenue by the end of the decade. It also means that the SoftBank Vision Fund will invest as planned another one point thirty five billion dollars in cruise. This is another strong vote of confidence in the cruise team, its technology and the services it's creating. Additionally, cruise continues to advance the strong relationship it has established with Walmart, where the team is making progress and driverless deliveries of groceries to customers every day. With this incremental investment and the investments from General Motors and companies like Honda, Microsoft and Walmart, Cruise is very well capitalised to scale its business when the origin production comes online at Factory Zero Late this year.

Alec: [00:12:53] so there you have it Bryce. We think that Elon makes big pronouncements, but the important thing to stress here, it's not just Elon in the car industry that's talking about full driverless cars. Cruise GM self-driving subsidiary has opened the waitlist to the public. They've been driving employees around to test their service. They think it will be a 50 billion dollar annual revenue business by the end of the decade. I don't want to get too excited, but this excites me. Hmm. Like driverless cars, you'll never, never have to get your licence. 

Bryce: [00:13:31] Well, I've got my licence. I was just going to say, though I may never have to buy a car, 

Alec: [00:13:36] You bought half of a Honda Jazz. The always it because I don't know why, but because 

Elon Musk: [00:13:41] it's just it's shit. 

Bryce: [00:13:46] Very fine. I would never have to buy a new car of which I've just made a conscious decision to buy a car anyway. So I made a subconscious decision so that the other one? Let's not get 

Alec: [00:13:59] bogged down on that. That's our first compare. The pair Elon Musk's backing. Well, Tesla. Yeah, nice. But I am really interested in what this looks like as a number of companies get in the game. So Amazon bought Zoox. The Australian, one of the co-founders is Australian, so they're trying to get in the game. Google has Waymo, which is the technology is a little bit different. It's not as scalable, but you can literally order an uber like self-driving car in Arizona right now. Pull out your phone, download the app and do it like, that's crazy, GM. That partnership with Walmart that they were talking about for driverless grocery delivery, like, that's cool. Hmm. And then obviously, Tesla, it's a really exciting time to just like think about like what what the world could look like by the end of this decade, what the transport infrastructure could look like. 

Bryce: [00:14:52] Pretty crazy. Yeah. Yeah, our kids will never need a licence. Not us. Maybe our kids. Yeah, yeah. Crazy. I think better think about what it's going to do to supply chains, and that's just the general cost of that last mile. 

Alec: [00:15:06] You love the last mile. So let's use that as a natural transition point to talk about two companies that are investing heavily in the last mile and changing their supply chains. Yes, let's compare the pair. Yeah, Nike and Adidas. Adidas does. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we've got both of their CEOs talking about a shift that we've sort of kept a half an eye on here at Equity Mates for a while because we think it's quite interesting. Both companies are really shifting from being manufacturers that rely on retailers, rely on, you know, Foot Locker in the U.S. or rebel sports in Australia, and they're really going direct to customer more and more. So here's we'll start with Nike, but we'll compare the pair and we'll listen to both of these CEOs of these major apparel companies talking about this shift. 

Nike: [00:16:04] Nike's digital growth is outperforming comparisons and being fuelled by our member centric focus. Nike Digital grew 11 percent in the quarter on a currency neutral basis, setting the pace for the industry. Nike Digital is now 25 percent of total Nike brand revenue, up three points versus the prior year and more than double the digital mix in fiscal 19. Enhanced onboarding experiences are attracting millions of new members into the top of the funnel, and we are focussed heavily on member engagement and buying. Member engagement grew 27 percent and repeat buyers grew 50 percent versus last year, driving overall higher air ROV and member buying frequency. 40 percent of total digital demand this year is coming from our mobile apps, highlighting the strength of our digital platform. We now have over 79 million engaged members across our Nike ecosystem. And as Nike's digital ecosystem continues to grow, we are beginning to see the compounding benefits of scale from brand awareness and consumer connexion to data informed personalisation and inventory utilisation to loyalty. This quarter, we held our first globally coordinated no days event, setting records in member engagement. From member exclusive product offerings to our first livestream, no events from our Nike Town, London and Parsec, the Glossier store in Barcelona, we created a distinct member experience and instead of record for weekly active users on the Nike app in North America. Now moving to one final topic. Connecting with today's consumers means serving them with the product they want, when and where they want it. Consumers want a premium, seamless and personalised experience with minimal friction across their journey to explore, engage, connect and purchase products from the brands they love. As we've discussed before, Nike is focussed on creating one Nike marketplace that elevates the brand by creating direct consumer connexions through fewer, more impactful wholesale partners with a connected mobile digital experience at the centre. Built for the Nike member. Over the past four years, North America has reduced the number of wholesale accounts by roughly 50 percent while delivering strong growth and recapturing consumer demand through Nike Direct. And our strategic wholesale partners leading the way for Nike in the second quarter, North America Digital grew 40 percent versus the prior year, pushing Nike Digital to 30 percent of total North America marketplace, bringing Nike direct to 48 percent of total. In order to enable this growth and drive the shift in marketplace composition, we have accelerated investment to evolve our distribution network and scale a digital first supply chain, leveraging advanced analytics, automation and technology. We have opened two new regional service centres on both coasts, which are able to deliver more units to consumers with shorter delivery times. We also enabled ship from store capabilities across our store fleet, all leveraging advanced analytics from our select acquisition on automation. We've added more than 1000 robots in our distribution centres to handle the digital growth in our digital distribution centre in Memphis. Robots handled more than 10 million units that would have otherwise required manual labour. We continue to scale our own consumer services across our store fleet, including buy, online pickup in store and digital order. Returns and store volumes are relatively small today, but we have significant opportunity to scale. We've also established new fulfilment models with key strategic partners to create inventory visibility across the marketplace and optimise for Bryce digital demand. When we do this right, the consumer wins. 

Bryce: [00:20:21] So, yeah, pretty big shifts coming Ren from from Nike, I remember when it was pretty big news when Nike announced that they were no longer going to be using Amazon as a distribution channel. They're going all on all through their own distribution channels, straight to consumer, they felt. And to me, that just speaks to the power of the brand, really. They've got such a strong brand and the ability and channels now to do it themselves. Why do you need third party? 

Alec: [00:20:46] Yeah, they reduced their wholesale accounts in North America by 50 percent. Yeah, they cut him in half. That's pretty amazing. And they've really embraced like the Apple model of retail, where they have these like Halo stores that are Nike stores where they showcase and then they try and really do online sales. But Adidas similar story that was Nike. Now let's hear from the Adidas CEO. 

Adidas: [00:21:15] Digital is also setting us up for success. Let me remind you that by 2025, the vast majority of our net sales will come from products that are created and sold in digitally. We're making stone progress in digitising our core processes across the entire value chain, which is helping us to build better products, react to trends faster and engage more personally with consumers. And I'll provide you with three tangible examples. First, we were able to shorten production creation time from six months to only a few weeks for certain new concepts in originals and training, which will start to have a meaningful impact on their sales in 2022. Secondly, our business model equips us with more and more consumer data, which will have delivering to drive an increase in full price year for DTC inclusive launches for up to 70 percent. Third, we continue to significantly invest in digital tech and data analytics capabilities and hired an additional 2000 digital experts in 2021. Although digital is becoming a core competency and an internal value driver for areas as well as we are able to meet consumer needs even faster and more effectively, the ambition to create more direct relationships across both digital and physical touchpoints is fully embraced by experience as a strategic focus area. We always said there will become a member space first, and we're making strong progress towards this target. In 2021, we've added 75 million new members to our digital ecosystem, which brings the total number of members to now 240 million. And let me reiterate, members are our most profitable consumers as they buy more than 50 percent more often and have a lifetime value that is more than two times higher. But we're not stopping there. Our seamless, enhanced consumer experience also extends to our retail space. As we added an additional 61000 square metres net selling space throughout the course of 2021, including new brand Halo stores in Dubai, Shanghai, Beijing, Berlin and Hamburg. 

Bryce: [00:23:17] Look no surprise that some of these companies are following in the footsteps of Nike, 

Alec: [00:23:23] who's following who. 

Bryce: [00:23:24] I feel like Nike went first on this year. That's just is 

Alec: [00:23:27] that just a gut feel that just because you think Nike is the first first in your mind, what do you mean like when you think of like sportswear and apparel? Like, No, no, no no one thinks about it at first.

Bryce: [00:23:37] No, no. But that's not what I'm no. No. Okay. I think it's just because I've like I felt like Nike have been much more outward with this type of a transition for a couple of years now. Yeah, OK. 

Alec: [00:23:50] I think the important thing to stress about this transition, though, is it's not just a shift to online like that is not this story. This story is a shift to like vertically integrated their supply chain and own it end to end. Yeah. And just really like get rid of other wholesalers, wholesalers. And I think one of the last things that we had in that clip from the Adidas CEO when he said they've added 61000 square metres of selling space. You know, across all these major cities, like they're not getting out of the bricks and mortar retail game, they're getting into it deeper. But they're just getting into it themselves rather than relying on other retail row

Bryce: [00:24:28] spots and other bricks and mortar stores. 

Alec: [00:24:31] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I don't like they'll always have a place, but it's just a it's an interesting business transition. The two numbers that I want to stress that I think were really interesting because as our conversation before touched on, we think of Nike first. We think of Nike moving first and moving faster. But their digital members in the digital ecosystem 79 million for Nike, two hundred and forty million for Adidas. 

Bryce: [00:24:56] Amazing. Yeah, I would not have expected that. It's incredible. I think Adidas probably is. As I think we said offline, I think there's a bit more streetwear in there and appeals to not just that athlete vibe. Yeah. So potentially wipe it staggeringly much larger. 

Alec: [00:25:13] Yeah. One other thing that we didn't include because it didn't really fit the compare the pin narrative, but we also listened to the Under Armour earnings call. And one thing that we really noticed was both Nike and Adidas celebrate their athletes. They're like Nike Air. Like, this athlete won this competition wearing this Nike shoe. And you know this Nike Hot and Adidas were celebrating that they're they're back in the running game, and the Adidas runners won more competitions than all other runners combined. And that was something they're really proud of. So they really celebrate the big athletes, the professional athletes who are wearing Nike. You know, Adidas had a big thing about Leo Messi to start their call. Under Armour has a different tact and I really like this tact, which is they've created this whole programme about grassroots sports and improving accessibility to sports. And they they are talking about the 

Bryce: [00:26:12] Jordans and the LeBron. Yeah. 

Alec: [00:26:14] I don't know who. As Under Armour, but heaps of athletes like professional athletes would. But instead, they're talking about they want to like basically just support grassroots root sport and I guess get customers that way rather than having like sporting idols Ren Bruton's. Good play. Yeah, great play. A very different strategy, but you can see the logic behind it. 

Bryce: [00:26:35] Big time. Now, just quickly on Under Armour, we've just come off an incredibly wet three weeks here in Sydney. Hopefully, everyone's going okay for those that have been impacted by the floods. If you're listening overseas, you may have seen on the news it's been it's been rather wet up and down the the east coast of Australia. I must say Under Armour have an incredible umbrella. Yeah, yeah. It's not circular. It's actually almost a square. It makes sense. Yeah, I've got it. 

Alec: [00:27:01] Hit me. Yeah, this isn't going to work for audio, but if people are watching on YouTube, maybe hold it up to the cam. 

Bryce: [00:27:07] Kind of hard to tell it. Like, it's it's it's not a circle and it's much more square like. So the Canopy Exposure is 

Alec: [00:27:17] not it's not quite a square. It's like an optical.

Bryce: [00:27:20] Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's outside. 

Alec: [00:27:21] It's like full on sides and for shorts on. 

Bryce: [00:27:23] Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 

Alec: [00:27:24] So if people are just listening to this, how are they visualising it? 

Bryce: [00:27:28] Yeah, true. 

Elon Musk: [00:27:29] What's what's the logic, though? 

Bryce: [00:27:31] The logic for me is more more canopy space, right? Yeah, 'cause it's pushing those sides out a little further. 

Alec: [00:27:38] Oh yeah. So it's like, 

Bryce: [00:27:39] Yeah, I got more canopy. No, but I just looked at the price, and they are very reasonable compared to some other golf umbrellas that you could buy. It's actually a golf umbrella. 

Alec: [00:27:48] Well, given that all of the umbrellas we seem to use in the office, we've been sent as free merch. 

Bryce: [00:27:54] We should get one. They look pro anyway. We're not here to discuss, compare the pairs with umbrellas. We are here. They can compare the pair, but 

Alec: [00:28:02] I think we need to take 

Bryce: [00:28:02] Bryce on sponsored segment there for Under Armour. 

Alec: [00:28:06] I think we need to take a break. Finish this umbrella, shot offline. Take a deep breath, centre ourselves and then we'll come back and we'll talk. We'll talk about Visa and MasterCard talking about crypto and then three of the Big Tech companies talking about the Metaverse. 

Bryce: [00:28:25] All right, Ren, so payments Visa v MasterCard, but payments, we're not going to talk about the traditional payments, we're going to talk crypto here. We're going to get the views from Visa CEO Al Kelly and MasterCard CEO Michael May back. 

Alec: [00:28:41] Yeah, I think, you know, we when we look at crypto Twitter, everyone talks about how you know, it's going to disrupt payments. And you know, all this stuff that decentralised finance, DeFi, all this stuff. Then you speak to an expert investors that invest in Visa and MasterCard, and they're not worried. And for me, it's it's always a question that I have, and it's something that I want to understand. So both the Visa and MasterCard CEO spoke about crypto, so we thought it was worth sharing how these companies are viewing this potentially disruptive technology. So let's start with Visa. Let's hear what CEO Al Kelly thinks about crypto. 

Visa: [00:29:22] We're also providing on ramps for crypto players creating connectivity with fiat economies. There are over 65 crypto platforms and exchanges that have partnered to issue visa credentials this quarter. These are credentials in crypto. Wallets had more than two and a half billion in payments volume, which is already 70 percent of the payments volume for all of fiscal 2021. In addition to embedding credentials in crypto platforms, we continue to innovate around our settlement and crypto API capabilities, which have been key differentiators for us for fintechs and financial institutions that are looking to extend crypto capabilities to their customers. We will continue to lean into the crypto space and our strategy is to be a key partner to provide the connectivity scale, consumer value propositions, reliability and security that is needed for crypto offerings to grow. Earlier this month, we previewed CBD payment APIs currently in development, which would which would enable central banks to connect their theory and based CBDCs with Visa Rail through a wallet with digital issuance capabilities, enabling consumers to spend with CBDCs at any visa merchant. We partnered with Consensus to develop this concept, which was selected as one of the winning entries out of 300 ideas from 50 countries at the global CBDC challenge as part of the Singapore Fintech Festival. Judged by representatives from the IMF, the World Bank, the Bank of International Settlements and the central banks of Brazil, India, Kenya and Indonesia. 

Bryce: [00:31:08] So look, I was surprised with this 165 crypto platforms partnering two and a half billion in payments volume via crypto. Those crypto partners more than I thought, to be honest. Yeah, but I feel like go to go with the talks going. 

Alec: [00:31:24] Yeah, it's also just the name of the game for Visa and MasterCard. It's like whatever disruptive technology comes in the payment space. Group it up. Get it on our payment rails, protect the payment rail duopoly at all costs. And you know, they did. That would buy now, pay later. They're doing it with crypto. Now these bills like these businesses, as long as those two are the only two games in town like their strong business. 

Bryce: [00:31:48] Yeah, precisely. So let's hear from MasterCard CEO Michael May back and apologies for the audio cuts in this a little. 

Alec: [00:31:57] Yeah, this is. This is not quarter all our fault. This is Mastercard's fault. Well, it's probably whatever software platform they used to host that WebEx. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, shitty WebEx Skype site, 

Mastercard: [00:32:14] but also bringing capability, experience and repeat to help enable Typekit and is aligned with ConsenSys will make it easier for software developers to increase the scale, efficiency and speed of transactions on Syrian and machine blockchains. And I think this is not just platform, which in 2020 continues to gain traction around central banks, financial institutions and fintechs. Similar issuance and distribution of the CDC, along with the integration of CBD. These with our comment was a Real-Time payment modules in the blockchain wallet. 

Alec: [00:32:49] So not a heap of detail here. I think we said we weren't going to cast judgement, but if I'm going to compare the pair between MasterCard and Visa, it feels like Visa are a lot more on the front foot when it comes to crypto. And I think that sort of reflects what we've been saying generally in the in the space, you know, just in terms like media reports and like, who's investing where? One interesting note, I think both Visa and MasterCard mentioned CBA. They say now that's an acronym that is going to be particularly relevant. Central bank digital currencies and it feels that both Visa and MasterCard are. Really working with central banks, so the Federal Reserve over in the US, the Reserve Bank of Australia back here in Australia, central banks around the world to create their versions of digital currencies. I don't think you can call them crypto currencies because they're, you know, centrally controlled, centrally managed all of that. They're not decentralised. But that will be a really interesting thing to watch develop over the next few years. And I think listening to commentary from Visa and MasterCard will give us a good indication of how far along those projects are. Yeah, because central banks aren't going to be that forthcoming. 

Bryce: [00:34:02] Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating space. Watch this space that is two companies that just keep on churning it out churning, 

Alec: [00:34:10] churning and churning. 

Bryce: [00:34:12] But speaking of churning companies that, well, a couple of these companies, one seems to be in a little bit of trouble at the moment, but it's time to close out. We can't do an episode at the moment, it seems, without talking about the Metaverse. 

Alec: [00:34:25] Yeah, and we we did try and stick to the compare the pair format, but we felt the trio we felt doing a compare the pair on the metaverse and just having and video and Microsoft and not having the company that changed its name to be about the Metaverse just didn't really fit. Yes, but we didn't want to cut either Nvidia or Microsoft, so compare the trio to close it out. We've broken the format of our episode, but hopefully it's worth it because we tried to get their visions of the Metaverse. Yeah, not not how they're investing, but like what they say the metaverse is 

Bryce: [00:35:04] because there's still a lot of questions, a lot of unknown people like, I don't get it. 

Alec: [00:35:07] Yeah, and to be honest, the Zuck clip was not as good. I don't think he's really 

Bryce: [00:35:14] he doesn't know what it is. 

Alec: [00:35:17] How many know so far? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he thinks it's like club penguin bots and embodied Clone Club Penguin. But anyway, let's start with Nvidia. They call it the Omniverse. 

Nvidia: [00:35:32] Nvidia Omniverse is a world simulation engine that connects simulated digital worlds to the physical world and is a digital twin, a simulation of the physical world. The system can be a building, a factory, a warehouse, a car, a fleet of cars, a robotic factory orchestrating a fleet of robots building cars that are themselves robotic. Today's internet is 2D and AI is in the cloud. The next phase of internet will be 3D and will be connected to the physical world. We created Omniverse to enable the next wave of they were A.I. and robotics touches our world. Omniverse can sound like science fiction, but there are real world use cases today. Hundreds of companies are evaluating Omniverse 

Bryce: [00:36:24] so that was Nvidia CEO giving his view on Nvidia's Omniverse. It's pretty science fiction heavy there. Ren. I think it's just a bit of a mind walk to understand what's what's going to eventuate. 

Alec: [00:36:36] Yeah, well, let's maybe ground it a little bit more in reality, because if there's one company that is grounded in boring software reality, partnering with businesses, none of these high minded idealism of Meta or Nvidia, it's just how do we practically use software and technology? I would say that's Microsoft. Yes. And here is a very practical explanation of the metaverse from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. 

Mastercard: [00:37:09] As the virtual and physical worlds converge, the metaverse, comprised of digital twins, simulated environments and mixed reality, is emerging as a first class platform. We are leading and seeing traction across public and private sector. Bentley Systems is building a digital twin of the city of Dublin to reimagine urban planning, use our Azure Digital twins, as well as Azure IoT. PepsiCo is stimulating its manufacturing processes to improve product consistency using our autonomous systems platform and from Airbus and Toyota to L'Oreal and Intel customers in every industrial, transcending space and addressing complex challenges using mixed reality. The US Army, for example, will use HoloLens based headset augmented with our cloud services. The new Microsoft Mesh builds on this momentum, allowing for holographic interactions with true presence in a natural way on any device. We're already seeing early adoption by Accenture, which is using mesh to build immersive virtual office experiences. Power platform is becoming the next generation business process automation and productivity suite for domain experts in all functions. We have taken a unique approach to what is an expansive and high growth time, bringing together robotic process automation, low code, no code tools, virtual agents and business intelligence using power platform and domain expect any domain expert can automate a workflow, create an app, build a virtual agent or analyse data rapidly driving productivity gains across the organisation through smart automation. 

Bryce: [00:38:55] Look, we speak of what is it going to look like? Microsoft there with some Pepsi, Bentley, Airbus, some examples of companies that are using this sort of mixed reality. Yeah, they're they're they're going pretty hard in this space. 

Alec: [00:39:08] The U.S. Army one's interesting. I would love to just say what it's like to do, like US Army training in the Metaverse. 

Bryce: [00:39:15] Yeah, yeah. Well, I imagine it might be not. Look, this is going to sound silly, but it could be very similar to where you went when we went to that arcade and put those VR goggles on, 

Alec: [00:39:27] go on 

Mastercard: [00:39:28] for a walk. How is it? You know, 

Alec: [00:39:33] I think it'll be 

Bryce: [00:39:34] a little bit more target practise, for example. 

Alec: [00:39:37] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:39:38] Because the reality is this anyway. I have no idea. So I'm just speculating. But let's close out, as you said, we can't have a conversation about meta the metaverse without talking about meta and Zuckerberg's views on matter. He's made it pretty clear the direction he wants to take. Meta Name change. You even have to call people who your colleagues, meta friends or something meta him or something like that. Unbelievable. Really trying to push it. It's like,

Alec: [00:40:03] Dude, we already have the mates thing down 

Bryce: [00:40:07] We need to trademark that. So here is Mark Zuckerberg talking through his views on the metaverse and and how they're approaching it. 

Nvidia: [00:40:17] Now, looking ahead, we're focussed on further scaling our computing power and transforming our AI infrastructure to advance in foundational research, as well as improvements to data centre design, networking, storage and software. Now, the last investment priority here is the Metaverse. We're focussed on the foundational hardware and software that are required to build an immersive, embodied internet that enables better digital social experiences than anything that exists today on the hardware front. We're seeing real traction with Quest two. People have spent more than $1 billion on Quest to store content, helping virtual reality developers grow and sustain their businesses. We had a strong holiday season and Oculus reached the top of the App Store for the first time on Christmas Day in the US. We're working towards a release of a high end virtual reality headset later this year, and we continue to make progress developing projects now, the race, which is our first fully augmented reality glasses. As for software, the horizon is Courtois a metaverse, the vision. And this is our social VR world building experience that we recently opened to people in the US and Canada, and we see a number of talented creators build worlds like a recording studio where producers collaborate or a relaxing space to meditate. And this year we plan to launch a version of Horizon on mobile, too, so that'll bring early metaverse experiences to more surfaces beyond VR. The walls of the deepest and most immersive experiences are going to be in virtual reality. You're also going to be able to access this world from your Facebook or Instagram apps as well and probably more over time. So this will enable us to build even richer social experiences where you can connect with friends in the metaverse, whether they're in VR or not. We're also focussed on avatars. We're talking how you represent yourself in horizons and across other developers experiences in the Metaverse. In December, we rolled out our Metaverse Avatars SDK to all unity developers on Quest and Rest and Windows based VR platforms, letting developers bring other avatars to their own VR experiences. We just announced an update to let through further customizer avatar to better express ourselves, and we're introducing digital clothing too, starting with an NFL partnership. You can share on your favourite team. You can use your avatar across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, and so it serves as another bridge between our two new social apps. The really immersive virtual reality experiences that we have a bunch of work at home. To me, the avatar is as expressive and high fidelity as they need to be to fully represent us and help us still present with one another. But I am very excited for the advances that we're making here.

Alec: [00:43:18] Bryce well, that is the final clip for this episode of our quartr earnings season. Compare the pair. We've heard some of the biggest CEOs, most well-known CEOs in the world Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and some less known but doing really interesting things. Al Kelly vs Mary Barra, GM. Any thoughts? Any final takeaways from the pair's should we go through? And you tell me your favourite say of each pack? 

Bryce: [00:43:48] Sure. Musk 

Alec: [00:43:49] Yeah. Next. 

Bryce: [00:43:51] Can't go past Nike president John and CEO and Visa and MasterCard. Interesting. I'm a Visa man. Never had a MasterCard. Never, never had a most interesting. 

Alec: [00:44:04] I've only ever had MasterCard, but I've only ever invested in Visa. 

Bryce: [00:44:09] Oh, there you go. So we know money talks. So, Al Kelly. And look, I love Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella for me. All right. See you later, Zuckerberg. But anyway, I also want to thank. Quartr downloaded in your app store now. A great resource. Honestly, a great free resource. We should stress for you to get direct access to all of these conversations and conference calls, earnings calls, market updates that we've been exploring over the last three weeks. So big. Thank you to quarter for supporting these episodes. Now we find it a great 

Alec: [00:44:48] resource and you may have noticed that they're now advertising on Bloomberg. Never forget where you started caught up. Never forget. It's time we say you're going on to do big things, but we'll keep doing these.

Bryce: [00:45:04] We never forget. Yeah. Anyway, that brings us to the end of today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. As always, if you have joined us for the first time. Welcome. Make sure you rate and review us. It goes a long way to promoting the show to to new users on your podcast apps, and don't forget to sign up to find first Equity Mates dot com slash finfest. The link will be in the show notes. Keep an ear out and an eye out for that as we release more information. We really can't wait. It's going to be an awesome event. Yeah, and we'll pick it up next week. Sounds good.