Episode Summary:

Earnings from LEN, AZO
UBER gives updated guidance

Guests:

Frank Holmes, Executive Chairman, Hive Blockchain (HIVE) CEO and Chief Investment Officer of U.S. Global Investors

Jay Young, President and CEO, King Operation Corporation

BENZINGA CANNABIS CAPITAL CONFERENCE

The premier gathering of cannabis entrepreneurs and investors in North America returns for a 2-Day Hybrid Event on October 14-15.

Speakers will include $SNDL and other major Cannabis Companies, for more information visit https://www.benzinga.com/events/cannabis/

MEET THE HOSTS:

Dennis Dick

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TripleDTrader

Mitch Hoch

Twitter: https://twitter.com/STORYInvestors

Joel Elconin

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Spus

https://www.premarketprep.com/

Disclaimer: All of the information, material, and/or content contained in this program is for informational purposes only. Investing in stocks, options, and futures is risky and not suitable for all investors. Please consult your own independent financial adviser before making any investment decisions.

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Unedited Transcript

All right. All right. What's going on, everybody having. Whew. We are back at it, wine and down the end of the week, another dreary to Detroit day here behind me. I hope everybody's got a little bit more sunshine than we do. It's also very cold. I'm now wearing a light jacket in the morning, but what's going on guys.

Market is ripping again. We are back to where we were before that Monday sell off, you buy the dippers out there. All of you by the dippers. I was not wanting. Congratulations to you. Round of applause, pat yourself on the back, you won a game. Uh, you know, I'm going to go ahead. Let's just look at this, this chart aspire really quick for a second, and we're going to zoom it out to a year and then we'll go to five years.

Uh here's the one year chart is by, by the day. Tried and true. Uh, here's a two-year charter spy by the dip tried and true five years. All right. I guess at the, by the dippers, just always seem to win this one. Uh, but what's going on guys? This is the power hour. This is the trade idea show. That's why we spend this time together every single day.

So if we are not delivering on ideas, call us out. You are empowered to do that in the chat. We're going to get rocking and rolling. Uh, first op we're bringing in Daniel from Curzio reading. Good. Good, good friend to Frank over there. Uh, and Daniel's going to be dropping some ideas on us. He's gonna be talking about the China situation a little bit, I believe.

Uh, and then we, we have three public company CEO interviews today. Jam pack guys. Okay. Three public company's CEO interviews. A lot of them may be stocks that you're not familiar with. I'll give you the tickers there. S T a B N G T F and S O V O. Uh, so, so again, S T a B N G T F S O V O a, but without further ado guys, uh, let's go ahead and bring Daniel from Curzio research in there.

And when you, if you have takers, drop them in the chat, uh, I see, et cetera, ETCs already go and he's got his affirm on there. He's got his hymns on there. Um, and, and, yeah, let's get these in here. Solar ops. We're talking about the cannabis. I am not in any of the cannabis stocks now, but, but, but maybe I ought to be, but let's ask Daniel, Daniel, are you in any of the cannabis names?

Um, not right now. No, but, uh, they've been coming across the headlines a lot. And first of all, thanks, thanks for having me great to be here. Um, but if I were to look at something in full disclosure, I don't have it and I've been kicking myself, but , uh, if you want to pull that up, there are basically a roll-up company that does a medical marijuana and the facilities that they're going to use to produce and grow and distribute.

And that's char has been absolutely beautiful from an investor standpoint. Five-year chart. Yep. And, uh, those guys, uh, I believe it's wall street guys that just got together and man, they they've just been knocking it out of the park. So that's the one that I would look at first, other than the big names Tilray and those et cetera.

But man, a friend of mine gave me that under a hundred and I just kept thinking, all right, I'll wait and wait and wait. And, uh, that's, that's frustrating, but that's investing that's okay. Uh, and, and Daniel, but before we hop into it, uh, give me a little bit of your background. Tell us, tell us about your trading investing career.

Um, and then let's dive into some time. Absolutely. So I joined a Frank Curzio here at Curzio research. Uh, coming up on four years. It'll be four years this October next month. And my background before that was, I started in the brokerage business as a financial advisor, uh, had series seven and 66. Then didn't enjoy that.

I like the research side, but not the front office standpoint. They believer in savings and investing. And on the saving side, I'm big into whole life insurance as a, as a wealth management tool. I know that raises a lot of red flags and always gets a good conversation started, but that's for another time, I can argue that until I'm blue in the face.

And, uh, then when I was listening to Frank's podcast and following him through his career, and when he said that he was starting his own shop and wanted an analyst, I threw my hat in the ring and here we are going on four years. Uh, and give it, give us the short insurance pitch. The short insurance pitch is if you're disciplined enough to say, if you compare a whole life insurance policy to a bank account, there's no other product out there that is quote unquote as safe and reliable.

And it gives you the opportunity to earn interest as you use your money. And there's a big difference between the interest you earn and the interest you pay with the flexibility on that. It's a fantastic wealth building opportunity over the long term. It's not a trading deal. Uh, if you're, if you're old right now and I don't mean to be rude about that, uh, that's what, you know, everybody thinks they're too old for everything these days, but, uh, if you're anywhere under, I'd say 50, you ought to really give it a look and most policies are set up.

In favor of the insurance company, meaning higher commissions, and you can split those premiums up and infinite banking process. If you Google that, you'll, you'll see a lot of good stuff. Uh, infinite banking by, uh, Nelson Nash. I believe I'll tell my head as a great book to dig into. All right, there we go.

And if anybody has a question about the insurance side, dropped them. And I'll pass it along to Daniel, but all right. Let, let, let, let's get back to the stock side. What what's on your radar right now? What are you thinking about? We, you, you gave us a cannabis name to look at already, but, but what else?

Yeah. And that was driven by, uh, you know, if you, you guys are all market junkies. So as you're looking at headlines and everything, uh, the biggest lesson that I'm learning and, you know, I don't have a crystal ball or anything, but you gotta be able to decipher. News to act on and what to ignore. And when you just, when your market junkies and you see a lot of things coming across your desk or your eyes, uh, in my opinion, headlines around pot stocks kind of went away and now they're coming back and I say, they're coming back over the last month, at least in my opinion.

So, uh, and that's driven politically, uh, there's a lot of headlines about, um, there's a group of. I think there's a bill in the house or the Senate. I'm sorry, I don't, I'm on the fence there about protecting banks that do business with, uh, pot stocks, because that's a big red flag right now. Cause you still have this illegal NIS at a certain level.

I mean, it's kind of scary to think about, Hey, the feds can basically go in and shut anything down, but we're not going to. So we're in this process of, Hey, this is a law, but we're going to ignore that. Uh, we see a lot of that with politicians on both sides of the aisle. So that's not anything new. That's, you know, I look through the world from a political and economic lens.

Uh, I think everybody should do that because it literally affects everything in our lives, in reality, as consumers and individuals. Okay. Alright. And I'll, I'll draw, I'll throw mine in the ring too. I'm going to throw in the, the one that everybody thinks about, but till Ray, uh, Erwin Simon, CEO of Tilray founder of Hain, celestial, good friend of Benzinga.

Um, I, I, he he's, I followed his career for quite a while and he's just such an incredible operator. Um, and, and so if I had to pick one, I'm picking the track record of, of, of his, on the management side and that's where Tilray would be my plate. And that's great because you want to focus on individuals. I mean, when you, when you don't have an investment that you can control, so it's not close to the vest you want to invest in management teams.

Um, Frank talks a lot about that with, especially in the resource sector, you want proven management teams, you want skin in the game. So if that gentleman and you know him like that, that that's a, that's a check mark on the, on the good side for the teacher. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, what else is on your mind?

You know, Yeah, we'll go from a boring to exciting. So low-hanging fruit. Uh, Intel has dropped the ball for a number of years. They've let you know, their lunch has been eaten by their competitors. They have a new CEO and I'm going to butcher this, but pat gins learner, and he just took over in February of this year.

And I think that this is a situation where you can buy it and forget about it. I have a little bit of a full disclosure. You earn a decent yield. And I think that as there's more volatility in the markets, and if you see this transition from growth to value, like everybody's warning about or volatility, you're going to go into hard brand names, solid brand names with good balance sheets.

And they. Just have to quit screwing up all the time, in my opinion, to get a higher price, uh, the new CEO's got big ambitions. That's what I like to see either. They're going to invest a lot in fab centers, uh, semiconductor buildings over the next several years. And that's a huge secular bull market.

That's not going away anytime soon. So Intel, if it's not exciting, But I do think that that's the lowest hanging fruit out there on a, on one of the big, yeah. And looking at some of the multiples really quick. I mean, it seems like a pretty cheap stock. So we're looking at a forward PE ratio of 12. Um, I don't have the S and P 500 handy, average handy off the top of my head.

Right. At least in the twenties, uh, and then a price to sales, a 2.8 versus that one I know S and P average is, is a little bit over four. So, so it definitely seems like a relatively cheap stock. Yeah. And you can argue, I mean, the, the lower PE uh, forward P against its peers is warranted right now, because again, they've been dropping the ball so many times, so this new CEO starts to get some momentum, starts to prove that they can show results.

I think that you can see that P rice faster than the actual results in reality. Markets are always forward-looking and that's exciting. That can be good or bad, but again, you get a few, uh, you get a few check marks on this guy's side, and I think it could just take off and easily be, you know, 20, 25% and then kind of find that new normal and hang out there for awhile.

And again, you get paid to wait and are you really worried about Intel going bankrupt? I'm not, but you know, that's a good, that's a good hiding spot. And I don't think it's going to be dead money going from. Yeah. And check this out guys. I, I just, I just want it up an income statement really quickly. Uh, you know, th this, this top number that we have here that I'm trying to highlight, uh, th th this is quarterly revenue, and I mean, we're looking at like five quarters in a row with.

Literally no growth. Um, you know, we, we zoom it out to annual revenue and we're getting a little bit of growth there. Um, but, but not, not crazy exciting. I think that's what Daniel's referring to. Yep. Absolutely. All right. All right. What else you said you're gonna start pouring and taking. That's boring. So a upstart U P S T is the taker and a quick, uh, are you familiar with this company at all?

I am going to Lockton. Who's also a good friend of Benzing as is very, very hot on this stock. A couple of times to us it's been absolutely going crazy lately and quick, a rabbit trail here. You guys need to be going through 13 F filings. Uh, there's free websites out there and that's just great use the power of the internet.

We've never lived in a better time where guys like me on 35 can take advantage of, I mean, the amount of resource we have or the amount of information we have for free right now over the internet. It's just a huge step forward and it's just blind, dumb luck that we get to live in this period. None of us picked when we got to be born in order to get some of this information at all, you'd have to go to libraries, different things.

So take advantage of there's 13 S I was going through those, uh, Dan Loeb of third point. Somebody I really respect and you know, like to listen to anything he writes or says and read anything he writes. So I just saw this in a filing and I just went through ticker symbols. Um, they're in a major growth platform where the banking and financial services are using a lot of AI.

They have been for some time, but it's getting a lot of capital to flow into that space right now. So they do personal loans, consumer loans, and they basically go in and show banks, Hey, we can show you how to make more loans with a. Risk tolerance and a lower default rate. And why wouldn't you pursue that or look into that if you're a bank and that's a scalable business with all the loans and trillions of dollars out there.

And as you can tell, I would wait for a pullback. This is definitely a momentum stock. Uh, we were just talking about, uh, PEs with, uh, Intel. I don't know what it is off the top of my head, but it's gotta be through the roof on. All right. And, and I want to throw this one out to the chat to, uh, is anybody in this Docker to anybody get into the stock from the show?

Because when we first talked about it, it was in the seventies somewhere. I, this is the first time I've looked at it in a wild scene, three 40. I, I clearly missed the boat. Uh, but, but I'm curious if anybody out there caught the rip in this one. And so, so Daniel, I like, I like what you're picking up on it that you want to wait for for some of that pullback and.

Let's let the momentum co come to a close, um, with the model like you're saying is so good. It's so reoccurring too, right. Is once a bank becomes dependent on upstart for, for lending and being like a core part of that engine is as to how they're pricing and deciding who to lend to. I would imagine that that's impossible, damn near impossible for these banks to rip out of their operations.

Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's a sticky product and it's scalable. So as an investor, that's a great thing to have. So, you know, be, be prepared for volatility. Um, I, quick story. I told my dad about this around $95 a share, and I said I was buying it and I didn't. And he did, and I wasn't lying to him and it went.

50 or whatever. And now look at where it is. He didn't sell it. So he's very happy. But of course I was kicking myself. I think I bought a gold stock or whatever, which I'm still down on. Uh, but I said, Hey, you need to buy this. I should buy this, but I'm going over here. And he did. So that's good. All right guys, and check out the quarterly revenue on this one.

We're looking at four quarters of data right here on upstart again, sticker U P S T. We went from $51 million of sales to $194 million of. In four quarters. That's I don't know if there's other public company that operates at this scale that, that that's had that kind of growth. I mean, that's, that would be, if somebody out there wants to go run a quick stock screen, so set maybe market cap threshold somewhere, uh, or, or may set a revenue threshold outlet, like 50, a hundred million dollars and see if any other companies have this kind of growth.

I, I would imagine that that there's not one. All right. So, so you're making it more exciting. Do you have a third one for us? Yeah. Along the same lines with the financial platform online platform, a sofa Jeffrey's just came out with initiation yesterday. I've been watching this. It's been volatile as well, and they put a PR $25 price tag it, price target on.

If I, uh, if I remember correctly, which is damn near 50% upside from current levels. Well, depending on what it's doing right now today, but. You have a lot of money flowing into this space. It just makes sense from a standpoint and hell their name is on that, a beautiful new, however, billion dollars. It took to build that a football stadium out in California.

Yeah. That, that, that, that was definitely an expensive sponsorship. I guarantee that. Yeah, I see, I see I'm using my trusty Benzinga pro here, looking at the recent analyst price targets. Uh, you know, I see the Jeffries yesterday that you mentioned at 25 Mizuho out there at 20. And then the, the low of the street credit Suisse came out about two weeks ago at 16 and a half.

Um, and, and, and so, so BA basically, uh, is, is the thesis on this one? Daniel it's it's right. Space, right stock within that space. Yeah, absolutely. It's just, it's more of a momentum play. Uh, I liked the idea in general, but it's just when you have massive amounts of money flowing into that and strong brand types, uh, those are great for trading opportunities and then they can turn into long-term holdings.

Okay. Yeah. And I'm zooming into a five day chart right now. So it's what we're looking at. I believe our five minute candles, let me get a, from a 10 minute candles, five day chart. Um, and, and we, we definitely see that rip higher with the market yesterday, uh, in, in tack down another 2% so far today. So, so, and let me throw this one out here, but I definitely see this symbol come up if anybody has long.

So if I take her S O F I give me the one in the chat, if not give me the two, I want to get a sense of where the crowd is at on the. Uh, I I'm not in so far, but I do own a couple of the online brokerages. Um, one that I'm getting hammered in right now, uh, I've trimmed the position, but still have a little bit of a position in his tiger.

Ticker T I G R a. It's like, like the Robin hood of China, Singapore, et cetera. Um, wow. We have a lot of Sophie owners in the chat check this out. Okay. So a lot of people who like sofa, I can get behind that. All right. Okay. All right. Daniel, anything else for us before we gotta hop? Uh, yeah, if you want to have a fun, uh, political pick a Smith and Wesson brands, uh, they're a pure play on fire symbol on that one.

S WPI. Thank you. You can see, we impressed. So that was the first you're you're on stock number four, and I knew the first three. Okay. There you go. All right. SWB. So that massive spike there was after an earnings release, uh, they've recently, uh, I think right around the first of this month, September, they did their quarterly earnings, but that massive spike there, that what you can see on the chart is they blew out the numbers on the earnings release.

And then it looks like the Reddit crowd got involved because look at that massive sky high, I mean, that thing just went parabolic for several trading days. Uh, this is a pure play on firearm. I know that's a touchy subject politically, but when you look at the numbers, the FBI background checks and things are falling year over year because of the strong, strong comps that they're compared to during the riots and the 2020 and all that kind of thing.

But 50% of new gun buyers are women. Um, everybody I'm a small town guy. I grew up around firearms. So I'm biased as everybody else is, but I'm biased towards them. This is a company with no debt. They are. In a position to continue raising their dividend. Uh, it's not impressive. It's not a high yielding thing, but they are buying back stock as well.

And you have a solid company with an amazing brand name and you have a product that people are, um, you know, it's, they have a huge demand for their products right now, their backlogs or their inventories about an eight weeks, which is kind of where they want to management. They're going to have issues along with everybody else with supply chains.

When you get a great business in a fantastic financial shape and a well-known brand, um, that's, that's a good one right there. So, and it's got a decent short interest. So that, that spike that you see on the chart that could easily happen again. Alright. I like it. It's interesting. I have, uh, let me throw this edgy Daniel, then we're going to have to hop in a minute here, but here here's my take on the gun stocks is I feel like literally always, or at least.

Once a year for the last 10 years, there's like a shortage. And like, there just becomes this narrative, all of a sudden that there's a shortage on guns or there's a shortage on ammunition. And then just a ton of energy pops into these stocks. And you know what I mean? It's it, it just seems like, uh, like, I don't know, like I'm sick, I'm bored of the narrative.

Yeah, it does. I mean, and you're right. That does happen. I will tell you the biggest risk I see. This is, and why I think you have some short interest is you have such a political movement and like your major funds and investment companies like BlackRock and those, they have, they kind of shun these kinds of stocks.

So you have a great business. You have high profit margins, but what's going to be. The big guys from flowing more money into these stocks is political reasons. That's your biggest risk in my opinion, but yeah, you're right. They, they get hot. They could be used as tradable securities. So that would work out for your listeners, but I wouldn't feel bad about buying and holding this either, but yeah, if you want to trade the pops and, uh, you know, sell on the rips and buy on the dips, that's a great idea.

Right? Alrighty, Danielle, I appreciate you hopping on with us. How can folks stay in touch? Where should they go? What should they check out? Yeah. Uh, my email isDaniel@curzioresearch.com. Be sure to check out Curzio research.com and our wall street unplugged podcast that we now do over Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays every single week.

Alrighty. There it is. Thank you for joining us, sir, and dropping the ideas. All right. All right, guys. How was that? I see recurring theme of the chat and talk about Viacom. We will get the via, comes to your V I a C, but, but without further ado, w w we're we're going to keep the show rolling. Uh, we, we've got a nice slate of guests coming in for us today.

Uh, first up CEO said, taro, biopharma, Mike Handley. I'm going to go ahead and let's bring Mike onto the. How are you doing today, sir? Thanks for that. Absolutely. Uh, and, and everyone, the stock symbol is ticker. S T a B said Sandy tango alpha Bravo, Bravo. Um, long week. Um, but, but, but my, my, I I'm one for, for a good stock symbol.

You know, if, if, if a, if a company has a good ticker symbol that like automatically notches it up in my book, so maybe we could just start there for a second. Uh, why. Yeah. Interesting question though. Thanks for having me again. Yeah. Stab is a Sitara biopharma, obviously ticker symbols are a little hit and miss.

Um, we were going for sta T but uh, stab is memorable. Um, and it also goes with our tagline, take a stab at stopping. Right. So, okay. We think it's more memorable than most taglines. Absolutely. No, that's great. I love it. It's like some of the ETF funds, right. I read out to them to I'm like, I don't know how you guys pick the ticker symbols, but if there's like a group or like, you know, something you survey include me in there, I haven't gotten any responses, but I love the memorable ticker symbol for sure.

Absolutely. And, and, and Mike T taking a step back from the ticker symbol to the company. Uh, could you just give us a little bit of an overview on Satara for anybody out there who might not know. Yes, the terrorist, a, a company that just became public, uh, July 27th through a combination merger with Cleveland Biolabs, which was a NASDAQ listed company.

I've been running a state Tara since April of last year. Um, we, uh, talked to Cleveland Biolabs synergistic platforms. So we're most looking at immunotherapies and, uh, it looked like a good combination of two companies. So we combined the two companies officially July 26. Or July 27th. Yeah. And I've been trading since then, and I've been working with circuits and getting visibility for our pipeline and we're about ready to initiate some Wade stage drug programs, uh, that we're really excited about that should help patients and deliver some new immunotherapies to the field.

Excellent. And Mike, you, you, you, you mentioned, I think it was April, 2020, that, that, that, that you joined the company, is that accurate or that you've been running it. Yeah, I've been running it since April, 2020. We've done two acquisitions, um, raised or secured over a hundred million dollars in gone public.

So it's been a busy what? 17 months. Yeah, no kidding. So, so, so, uh, the, the next question I have is, uh, is on background and, and I, I sort of have two pieces of it. Um, and, and you can pick the answer one, one, or both, uh, but, but either what, what was the impetus for the company? Or can you talk a little bit about your career prior, prior to.

Yeah. Yeah, I'll answer both. So I've been in front of biotech for 24 years of running companies for the last 15 years. I'm very interested in the biotech space. Immunotherapy space started off at Amgen Genentech, which are the two big giants and biotech, of course, Genentech bought by Roche now, but Amgen still, uh, independent, uh, took over 17 products to market.

You know, raise close to half a billion dollars and, uh, Brandon's is the terror. Like I said, April last year, they had a very interesting portfolio and uh, thought, um, this would be a great public company, a great opportunity to get some drugs, to some much needed patients, um, that don't have any other alternatives that are.

Uh, so very excited about our platform, multiple shots on goal. We've got a great story and it resonates well with the street, from our interactions and our non-deal roadshow we've been doing. So we're very excited, better than current position. Okay. And I'll, I'll pick up on that roadshow comment that you made, you know, and w when you're going out to wall street and you're talking about the company, uh, you know, what, what aspect of the business is, is getting investors most.

Yeah. Great question. So if you follow the biotech sector, we've seen immunotherapies just exploded in the past five years, I'll use two examples, Humira, which is a TNFL Footlocker sells about $19 billion a year. What's number one, uh, drug selling in us. And I think the world, and then you look at Keytruda.

Merck's drug is a PD, one PDL, one inhibitor. It sells at 13 billion. It's also. Um, our approach to immunotherapies is a little bit different than what big pharma is doing. Those particular drugs suppress the immune system, uh, as in Humira. And they do that, um, to account for, um, uh, Crohn's disease, IVG rheumatory arthritis, and then the cancer drugs take the brakes off your immune system.

So in effect, our narrative to wall street is the current immune therapies out there or. And they're generating a lot of cashflow and they're helping patients, but they also come with a large amount of side effects because you're suppressing the immune system. Um, in the one case with the Humira and other TNF, alpha blockers and the other cancer cases, you're increasing the probability of hyper inflammation in those patients.

And that's been a cause and a concern and a warning for Keytruda, both great drugs, uh, both help patients, but we think there's a better way of doing immunotherapies. And that's what we're telling the street. And they're gravitating. Okay. And can you talk to us a little bit about him? Question in specifically the integration stuff.

Yeah, I'm close was the second company we acquired. Um, they're a research driven company with, uh, cashflows and, uh, we're in the process right now of integrating them into our R and D platform. And they're working on our second gen, uh, immunotherapies. And we've got a couple of, uh, potential interesting candidates we're working through, but the inquest simply adds to.

And, uh, we're building, I think one of the more interesting and the largest tool, like reception pipelines, um, in the U S if not the world, and that provides us with, again, a lot of shots on goal and a lot of ways to help patients. Okay. And I guess maybe taking a, a step back or a step higher than, than, than inquest specifically.

Uh, but, but how do you see M and a fitting into the company's roadmap and why have you made the choice that, Hey, that that's the route that we're going to pursue to really grow. Yeah, I'm a firm believer the, uh, Biven bill, right. It's a lot of companies out there that have interesting technologies or platforms that would take me, you know, months to years to replicate the same thing and a much higher dilution to our shareholders.

So, um, being opportunistic, looking at companies with the us. Uh, or complimentary or technologies that are complimentary. Um, we'll definitely use our public stock as currency. And like I said, we're well capitalized and we'll be opportunistic about what we go out and acquire, but it's definitely in the mold of our strategy going forward.

So look at M and a, and be opportunistic about increasing our pipeline, both depths. Okay. And Mike, let, let, let me ask you one more question. And this one is always a tough one. Uh, but, but if you had to name one, one thing that you're most excited about, so somewhere on the roadmap, what, what would that one idea.

Yeah, great question. Everybody asks me, um, obviously cancer therapies are near and dear to everybody's heart. Everybody knows a relative or friend that has cancer, and we've got some very good cancer therapies for developing an adjunctive treatment. Um, but probably the drug program I'm most excited about is our Crohn's programs.

So what we've seen in phase two data is, uh, double the rate of remission in patients who take a once a day world. So current standard of character, marrow, injectable, biologic, um, you get a remission rate of in the low thirties. Um, our what our data, what we've seen is about a 67% remission rate, four weeks, once a day dosing, that is very compelling.

And then the other thing I'm really excited about Crohn's is currently for pediatric Crohn's patients. There's nothing out there that, uh, Works. Well, all of that is black box warning. And as kids develop their immune system, it's really hard for them to be on these biologics, like Humira, Stelara, and Remicade.

So we're running a phase three pediatric study that should kick off by the end of the year, um, in, uh, pediatric Crohn's patients. And we believe this will be a viable alternative to all the kids out there suffering from Crohn's disease. Awesome. Mike, I appreciate you taking the time to come on with us today.

CEO said Tara, a ticker S T a B. And as I said, I do love that symbol and I love the memorability of it. If that's even a word, digging a stab at cancer. Awesome. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thanks for, thanks for your time. Have a good day. Absolutely. You as well. All right. All right, producer, Amy, what do you think.

Love it love the company. Love the ticker. Great to have Mike on. Um, but Luke, we have an absolutely packed power hour show. Today. We brought on Daniel from wall street and unplug. We brought on my from Sitara buyout. Now it is time to bring on Sean C Sean folks and CEO of night food. Um, so without further ado, oh wait, wait, wait.

Celsius is a hundred bucks. No way. Wait, did we ever get the video of Jonah shock? He said, he said he was going to shut you down. He did it leap and you're sleeping on Celsius. Sorry. Um, yeah. And then you also saw the news that Jonah said a Celsius is sending us some, some drinks to Florida for the conference.

Yeah. Guys, if you want to come hang out with me and producer a B in journal up them and put the link in the chat, come say, hi, it's going to be about. That's really the only thing that's keeping me going at this point. So there you go. It will be a good time. Um, all right, Luke. Well, without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and bring Sean folks in on the show.

Sean CEO of night food. Thank you for joining us on the Benzinga power hour. How are you doing on this beautiful Thursday? Great. My pleasure. Happy to be here. Great to have you, um, before we get started, do you mind just giving some, uh, background on the company for maybe some of our audience that may not be familiar?

Sure. So across the country, On any given night, you've got over a hundred million people that are snacking in between dinner and bed. Uh, the most popular choices tend to be things that are loaded with excess fat, excess sugar, excess calories. Cause that's what we're hard wired to create. So you've got all these snacks being consumed, and they're not only unhealthy, but they're actually disruptive to sleep.

When you eat the wrong things before bed, it can impair your sleep quality. So knowing that so many people are snacking at night on a regular basis, what night food does is we deliver healthier snack options that are specifically formulated to satisfy those nighttime cravings, but do it in a better, healthier, and more sleep friendly.

There's plenty of companies out there over the last 10 or 15 years that have launched and had a lot of success with better for you snacks, which are generally healthier in terms of, you know, protein content or sugar content or caloric content, but only night food has looked at. Knowing that people are snacking within that hour or two before bed, what should we be putting in our bodies and what shouldn't we be putting in our bodies to make sure that we get the best night of sleep and sleep is becoming more and more of a challenge for a lot of people, uh, especially now with COVID.

So we think the timing is great, and we think there's a billion dollar category to be had here in the category of nighttime. So is this something, I guess that took a lot of, you know, scientific research on, on night foods and to figure out like what it is specifically about, um, you know, what's in typical ice cream that can disrupt someone's.

Well, I mean, there's been a general consensus for quite some time, and there's been a lot of research over the years. Uh, you know, excess sugar, uh, fat and calories are problematic. Um, you know, there are certain nutrients that can be beneficial, magnesium, calcium, zinc, vitamin B6. Uh, so the research really existed.

Uh, and when we launched our, our challenge was. You know, to formulate a great tasting product, uh, with all these ingredients that can satisfy those cravings in that way. So, uh, really we stood on the shoulders of the existing research, which was out there. And it's really interesting because with so much snacking already happening at night.

See, this is, this is not a behavior. That's, uh, it's not a trend. It's not a fad. This is how humans are wired. We're wired to crave these things at night, so it's not going away. So there was a lot of talk and a lot of research before we launched, but nobody had ever launched a product into the category, which we thought was really interesting.

Now we've got Nestle, we've got Unilever, we've got Pepsi. They're all talking publicly about this category. Um, but, but we're the only ones operating in it. And so the challenge for us was not really to figure out what our snacks should be. An ice cream is the first, you know, what they should contain. It's more about really educating the.

Got it. Yeah. And I mean, it sounds like, I don't know if it's fair to say, but you're kind of, um, you know, hacking the human, like hardwiring of wanting to crave these things, but then we, you can eat these things, but in it, and it tastes like what we're craving, but it doesn't have those kinds of detrimental effects on sleep.

Is that. Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, you know, th the reason we crave these types of things at night is because putting extra fuel inside your tank before fasting is a survival mechanism that really served well, you know, the caveman ancestors, uh, you know, if, if they didn't have the resources, if they didn't store excess fuel inside their body, in the form of calories, they were less likely to survive.

And specifically before the nighttime fast, that's when those cravings, that's why appetite peaks. Um, so yeah, what we're trying to do is, um, make sure that, that when you do give into those cravings and most people do that, you're doing it in a way that's beneficial and not detrimental. Got it. Um, so real quick on the business side, um, I understand.

Uh, you know, you guys do a lot of I'm on the website right now, a lot of direct to consumer. Um, I see, you know, shipping is only 6 95 for an eight, eight pint order, but what about all on the B2B side, on the business to business side? Uh, you know, where does night food stand as far as with partnerships with, uh, you know, places like hotels and chains like that?

Yes. So, so from a retail distribution perspective, we're in divisions of Albertsons we're in, uh, almost a thousand Walmart stores across the country. And other supermarkets and we're expecting to add quite a few more supermarket chains, uh, in the spring. You know, those meetings that are going on right now and things are being finalized, but the real cab.

And what's going to be happening in the next few weeks and months is the hotel launch. So we were making a big push into hotels prior to COVID and then obviously COVID slowed things down quite a bit, but, uh, in the hotel environment, you know, everybody's been in the supermarket and you see there's there's six or eight doors of ice cream.

There could literally be hundreds and hundreds of different varieties, different skews in there in the hotel environment, you've got a consumer that's typically purchasing for more immediate consumption. Our packaging, as you can see there says sleep friendly right on the front. We sell very well in the hotel environment in the past, we've sold pint for pint with Ben and Jerry's pint for pint with hogs.

And we got contacted, uh, late last year. One of the leading global hotel brands just conducted and completed a test of night food in several of their hotels. And the test went very well. And what that's going to lead to is a national rollout of the ice. And what we believe also could be the ability to very quickly introduce additional product formats into that hotel environment.

So the product sells very well. There, it's a great opportunity to capture high margin businesses, much more profitable than the supermarkets, but it's also really supportive. Of the supermarket distribution. Uh, we've seen, um, we've seen RX bar get into gyms and use that gym distribution to support their supermarket rollout.

And then they sold to Kellogg's for $600 million a couple of years ago, Oatley also, which just IPO a few months ago, they very publicly stated their strategy is to roll into coffee shops. They've got to deal with Starbucks. Consumers will interface with the brand in that environment. And that will build trust that build awareness, and then the consumers run into the supermarket and start buying the product.

So we think the hotel piece, obviously it's going to be great revenue contribution, great profit contribution, uh, but also really, really supportive of our supermarket expects. Yeah, that that's good insight there as to how you can kind of raise brand awareness through some of these, uh, B2B deals and that way, um, you know, bolstered the, the B2C sales as well.

Um, so, so you mentioned some other of the big ice cream players out there. Um, do you see Knight food as a potential, like takeover target down the line? Uh, I do. I think it's, I think it's going to be inevitable. I think we're going to force their hands. You know, uh, when you think about it, Nestle and Unilever are the two largest out there, and they've both publicly expressed interest in this category.

And, you know, especially being in the hotel vertical, it's really going to cement us as, as the category king and the category leader, you know, we've seen five-hour energy still sells over well, over 80% of the energy shots in the country. You know, every, everybody in the energy drink business just about has launched a shot and five-hour.

Just swats them away. And I think, you know, if we play our cards, right, the same thing will happen in the nighttime nutrition space. And specifically being in the hotels makes it really hard for somebody to come in and try to outflank us. It's a lot easier to do if you're relying strictly on supermarket distribution, there's a lot more opportunity for the big players to come in and try to push us around.

But in that hotel space, I think it's really going to insulate us quite a bit. Um, it's also going to really accelerate. Um, our growth curves so that by the time anybody decides they want to get in, we're going to be running out with really tremendous revenue growth as we scale into the hotels. And, you know, even if the first company decides they're going to try to launch against.

Then what is the second company going to do? Are they going to play for third place? Are they going to try to require, uh, the category pioneer? So, um, I do think it's inevitable. Uh, you know, we've got some revenue targets that, you know, when we hit those, everybody's going to have to decide how are they going to.

One thing. I didn't mention almost half of all snacking takes place at night. This is not a small niche. This is not five or 10%. This is almost half of all snacking. And it's not just Unilever and Nestle. Everybody knows about this Mon delays and Kellogg's, and Hershey's any company that's in the snack space.

They know when the Oreos and the Doritos and the Ben and Jerry's are being eaten. And once we show that consumers are wanting and willing to make a small change in order to support better quality. Right, which is an easy jump for any consumer to make. Once these big companies realize that, then they know that the whole landscape of the snack category is going to change.

You're talking about almost half of all snacking up for grabs. When all these cookies, chips, candy and ice cream are being consumed between dinner and bed. I don't think they're going to be able to lay off. I think we're going to be fielding. I mean, we've already been contacted by some of the companies, um, at least one of them that I mentioned on this call or.

Um, I think the phone's going to start ringing once we start to really scale our revenues coming up. Got it. Yeah. That's exciting. I guess a, you know, a follow up question on that would be, how would you, uh, you know, quote unquote, you know, force their hands, as you said, you know, like what's to stop, you know, Unilever or, you know, uh, Ben and Jerry's whoever it is from going out and trying to develop their own sleep friendly.

They could certainly do that. It's really not the way things are done. I mean, there was nothing stopping Kellogg's from making their own, you know, cleaner labeled bar. Uh, there was nothing stopping Hormel, which already owned Skippy, peanut butter for making their own organic brand. But no, they acquired Justin's.

Um, and, and up and down the line, you know, uh, it's just not the way things are done these days for them to try to launch against us when they see a category pioneering. Growing at, at, you know, an exponential growth in a category where there's obviously going to be one king and lead player acquisition is the only way to go.

Um, everybody else is going to be competing for second place and they all know that. Got it. Um, all right, Sean. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the power hour. Uh, but my final question thought would be, have you ever thought about doing a 180 and maybe making a caffeinated ice cream for breakfast?

No, no, I've never heard about people have said we should make day food as well as night food. But you know, you look at the NyQuil analogy, right? And yes, they, they do make DayQuil now, but, but by, by, by commanding a specific day part, Luna bars, another great example when cliff made Luna bar as a protein bar for women, people said, Hey, you know, you're, you're eliminating a portion of your audience and the same thing with Nike.

Uh, back in the mid to late sixties when they launched, but there's a lot of power in that kind of focus. And by being the company about nighttime snacking, when I was half of all snacking takes. At night, there there's power in there. We don't feel that it's limiting at all. We feel that it's laser-focused and it's not only going to be, uh, be more powerful in terms of our ability to grow, but it's going to present a more powerful, uh, value proposition to, uh, investors, whether that's our, our day-to-day shareholders or ultimately other conglomerates that might choose to enter the space through acquisition.

Got it. Well, Shawn, thank you again for coming on the show today. I look forward to having you on again, anytime night, food has some exciting updates or news. We'd love to have you back on to kind of, uh, you know, bring that news to her. Fantastic. Thanks for having us. I know you mentioned Celsius hitting a hundred, you know, I've been studying Celsius.

Um, you know, the, the chart is amazing and you see, there was years, you know, they were cranking away and the stock didn't move and now they're really getting rewarded in the marketplace. So congratulations to John and the whole Celsius team as well. Yeah, of course. You, you, you mentioned the chart, you a trade stocks.

I don't, but I, I do feel a lot of questions from investors and certainly, you know, I'm studying Celsius to see, okay, you know, what, what was going on during those years? Where were, were, wasn't moving, you know, what changed? And, and it's a really, uh, really amazing thing to look at, but now I only do it because, because I'm asked.

A hundred percent of my net worth is in night food. And, uh, my, my wife and I are okay with that and my kids. And we're very excited about. There you go. Who knew, who needs diversification. All right, Sean. Thank you for joining us. We'll be in touch. We'll be in touch. We'll we'll have you on again soon.

Thanks so much guys. A B I was, I was late for that. Um, but. Aye. Aye. Aye. What I want to say. It was also in the chat, which was, uh, someone who, who said this in the chat. They have very cool labeling. I feel like a, uh cause I, everyone always like, whenever you take like a marketing course, they always say, oh, labeling and packaging is so important.

And I think, oh, that doesn't work on me. And then here I am. I'm like, oh yeah, they have, they have cool label. I might try that because all that stuff, if that works is done on the subconscious level. So you're not actually. Um, you know, consciously saying, oh, I'm going to buy this because it's got better packaging, but you subconsciously do, did you not?

I may have missed it. So I apologize. Did you ask for, for free sample? No, I forgot to do that. I don't know if Sean can still hear us, but if you can, you can email email, I'll send you our address and we will gladly take some free samples. Um, yeah. Spencer, the only question you caught was mine about the, the morning ice cream.

Hey, if they're not going to do it, that might be a whole, whole new market out there. Can they, can they, I don't know if you can ship by stream in the mail, whatever, whatever, and you missed it on the, on the website eight by eight pints. It's only $6 and 95 cents. It's a great, I was preparing, I was preparing for our health care conference negative next week.

So I apologize for, but I'm here now. I'm here for our next, our next guest, which I'm excited for AB. Um, we have Todd Lachman, who is the Sovos CEO. It's very exciting. The company is IPO in today. Um, and, and we are getting fresh new public companies on the Benzinga power hour. Nowhere else. Can you go on YouTube to find content like this?

So smash the like and subscribe. If you haven't already Spencer, without further ado, let's bring Todd on this. There is that guys doing great to be with you today? Yeah, Todd, I'm sure you're very busy today with Sovos IPO in. Um, are you joining us live for I'm from New York? I am joining Vive from New York.

Uh, the NASDAQ tower right here. Wow. How's the day going so far busy, but great. Uh, honestly guys it's, uh, I mean, what an exciting. You know, for, uh, for so most brands we're thrilled. Uh, know, we're just thrilled for the journey ahead. It's like to tell you more about it today. And so maybe let's just start with what, what, what the company is, and then I'll, I'll get to my, my, my real questions.

So look here. Well, I've been in the industry for awhile, so throughout my career, Plus year time. And in CPG, I was, you know, across brands, categories, companies, geographies. I was always struck by the fact, you know, that you've got these smaller on-trend brands growing at the expense of the largest brands in the store.

Some people call them challenger brands, disruptor brands at Sovos. We call them one of a kind brands, but I, I felt that there was an opportunity to create a company specifically suited in order to. Uh, have the talent, the culture, the capabilities, the infrastructure, to build a portfolio of these, one of a kind brands.

I mean, w we look specifically for brands that have tastes superiority strong, consumer affinity, high quality ingredients with a cleaner label and authenticity at their core. And that's what we have with Rayos Michelangelo's Noosa, Birch benders, fastest growing food company in the U S uh, outperforming our categories by 25 percentage points.

And the journey is just. Okay. Since we were just talking about it, uh, and I didn't get to ask our last guest, I'll ask you Todd, just about packaging and labeling and branding and, and just how important on a scale, like one to 10, how important is that for you? On a scale of one to 10? I don't know if it's, uh, it's, it's really important.

Um, I don't know. Let's say it's like, let's, let's say it's a, you know, a seven, eight, you know, kind of what you're talking about, but what's, what's interesting. I think it's more important, uh, for brands like ours that are premium priced high quality. The difference is so different. What's in the jar that, you know, that is the most differentiating aspect for us.

The package is. But what's doubly critical. Let's take a brand like Rayez. You've got whole Italian peel tomatoes, fresh basil, fresh onions, olive oil inside that jar, slow simmered and cooked and open kettles. And you've got the market leaders with paste and added sugar and added water and canola oil. So just to kind of highlight the difference in our products versus.

The difference of, uh, you know, once they're, so with us, the reason we're able to command a premium price. I mean, Rayos is three times the price of the market leader Rayos is growing at 42%. We're almost the number two brand in the category and the market leaders are flat to declining. So what's in that package is really the magic that's delighting consumers.

So, is it mostly, you know, brands under the Sovos umbrella? Are they mostly, um, you know, healthier alternatives organics, um, or is that just happens to be the case with a rail? Sure. No, all our brands, we look for brands with high quality ingredients and cleaner label. Let's say Birch benders has an organic offering, a high quality ingredients.

Uh, basically almond flowers, tiger, nuts, uh, you know, all sorts of high-quality ingredients in those products. We have organic, we have a keto and paleo offering keto and paleo Birch benders, pancake waffle mix, two of the fastest spinning items. Then you've got a brand like new stuff, whole milk, real fruit, north American wildflower, honey, with a proprietary process.

I mean, this is a great example of guys that, you know, we're, the category is going one way. How much taste can we take out of the container? We're looking at, see how much tastes we can put into the product. And that's why consumers are flocking to new Senate's it's growing well. Well, ahead of the category, very differentiated.

Oh, go ahead, Spencer, go ahead. Have you, or maybe down the line, have you guys ever sold like individual brands to maybe market. We, we have acquired we've averaged about four acquisitions a year. We have not invested in asset. We have no plans to we're building a portfolio of one of a kind brands. And quite honestly, we have, uh, you know, plans to acquire more brands in the future.

Uh, Y you mentioned the term CPG consumer packaged goods. Why would a consumer package goods company IPO right now? Why. Sure. Well, I, you know, I think just speaking for Sovos brands, we're of the size, you know, the scale, the profitability level, then it's appropriate for us. We've been, uh, you know, we were founded four and a half years ago.

We're a $669 million of sales growing at 31% were profitable. This is not a story where I'm saying, Hey guys, I'll be back on in five years when I am profitable. We've been profitable from a, from day one. Uh, you know, so I think at this level, and then look at it, it provides us with, uh, with the balance sheet and the infrastructure and, you know, the sort of widen the aperture to whether it's talent, acquisition, future M and a it's just, it's the perfect time, honestly, for, uh, for Sovos to become a public.

Got to ask you about the Al green in the room, which is just, um, uh, the impact that, that COVID the pandemic has had and on everything, right? Uh, whether it's supply chains, whether it's labor costs, uh, whatever. However, you want to answer this question and take it, but like what, what is the impact that the last year and a half has had on your business?

Sure. So. Look, I mean, I think there's a few things that, uh, if you just think from a brand perspective, we have brands that have that taste superior brands that have strong consumer affinity with the type of ingredients that we have. They have a higher propensity to stick in a household after trial. Then highly substitutable me to mainstream brands.

So we have gained the amount of trial that we've gained over the past 18 months has been prolific just during this, this horrible pandemic. And if you look at a brand like ratios, our penetration is double from 5% to 9.6%. That's why the brand is growing at 42% last 52 weeks versus, you know, the. You know, flat.

So, uh, you know, what we've seen is we're gaining trial of our, you know, of our premium brands and they're sticking in the, in the household clearly from a supply chain standpoint, uh, you know, just like everybody, we've had to be really nimble and tenacious and keeping our products and supply. And I'll, I'll tell you one thing we're in a year, as difficult as it was in 2018.

And a company of our size. We've got vendor of the year at target and supplier of the year at whole foods. Wow. Because you know, one of our core guiding principles is obsessed with the front line. You know, we're the more time we can be focusing on our retails or on the consumers, on our frontline heroes that come to work every day to make our delicious products.

Uh, I mean, that was a real, a Testament to the fact that, you know, our, our phenomenal employees are working so hard to keep our customers in. So Todd, I don't know if you have kids, but it's oftentimes hard to, uh, to pick a favorite kid, but I'm going to ask you, I'm going to ask you to do it here out of the four brands, uh, currently right now under Sovos, which one is your favorite?

Or maybe what's the most popular in your own household? Yeah, I do have three kids and we always joke about which job I'm not going to ask you that question. I'll ask you, Kyle Paul and Isabel are listening today. So I will, I won't treat. But, uh, I apologize. I'm going to tell you right now that I've got four outstanding children.

So those portfolio with those, with Noosa, with Birch benders, uh, it, look, you got a brand like radios. That's changing the sauce category forever in regards to whole tomato sauce, you have nuisance. Is there a category in and of itself, it tastes, tastes like yogurt. And then we couldn't be more excited that we just added Birch benders to the, uh, to the portfolio, the fastest growing frozen waffle they're a brand.

We just launched it into the baking mix aisle with some Quito offerings. So, uh, for four great children in the, uh, in the Soho's portfolio. Oh, favorites. Todd, is there a product category you're not in, but you very much want to be in right now. So great. So I'd say number one, we were at about seven categories.

Now. We really like the categories that we're in today. I would say I'm not going to choose a category, but I would say that there are categories adjacent to ours or close to adjacent to ours, that we also really like, we, there are other sleepy categories that are in need of disruption or are being disrupted today by other brands that we would love at some time to add to the Sovos portfolio.

So, you know, Some companies are sort of attracted to the category. that? Wow, this is like the place I've got to be. I'm not going to name that area, but there's, some of those were, you know, we're sort of looking at a different direction or those categories that, that, that are right for disruption. I'll tell you a category that we entered with ratios with soup.

Everything is in a can. Why can't it? The consumer gets sued. That's not an, a camp. Well, until Rayos came in with glass jar. Absolutely delicious meal and a jar consumers. Couldn't get Superdome in a jar and now they can see that great delicious soup. And it's the, now the number five soup brand and only 18 months.

Uh, last one for me, you mentioned you're in a target you're in whole foods. I assume you're nationwide. If you're in both of those locations, have you considered direct to consumer model? Sure. So we, uh, we're partnering well, their customers, whether it's clicker collect and on their retailer e-commerce programs, we do sell an example of what we do sell direct today.

If you go on rails.com, we have great gifting baskets. We have some super premium rails, limited reserve products. So aged balsamic, white truffle marinara. We do sell a direct some, uh, some super premium, super, super premium products on the, uh, on the, on the radio site today, as well as, as well as Birch benders.

So, um, we do have some experience and, uh, in that area, but not for the, the, the main, the main products, the main products are on only in stores. Uh, the majority. Yes. Okay, cool. All right. I, I think we covered it. It's one o'clock we don't wanna take up too much of your time. It's been a busy day. We've we we've been on with Todd Lockman, the CEO of Sovos brands, ticker, S O V L IPO, like for an hour ago, actually.

Um, so, uh, yeah, Todd, thanks so much for, uh, taking time out of your day to, to hop on that. And you can get to ring the bell today. Yeah, we do. We do. Awesome. All right. We'll be watching. We'll be watching. Hey, great to meet you both. You as well? Uh, that was fun, Spencer. Um, I'm hungry, man. As I know, we went straight from ice cream to more delicious food.

It's like, what are we, what are we doing right at lunchtime to, oh my gosh. Yes. I'm Hong it's one. O'clock let's go eat everyone. Uh, grab some food and come back to, uh, get technical with you're starting live right now. AB I think, uh, can we get, uh, I think we'll get Neil going and if you haven't already guys drop us.

How many likes are we at? Let's find out not enough, not enough. And I'll tell you that much or at wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. We're at 52 50. Oh guys. Come on. Four interviews today, three public company execs, one IPO and a Partridge in a pear tree. We did it all for you today. So at least get us to a hundred and.

Th th that, that that'll be, that'll be that I spent, I'm going to hop out and get Neil started. I will see you when I see ya. Okay. AB was see over on gay telling all this stream will end. It'll redirect you automatically to get technical. That's how we do things here on Vincent. Any feedback, questions, comments, concerns shows admin zynga.com.

Email us, check out Benzinga events.com. To see all of our future events from our, our healthcare conference next week to cannabis next month to, uh, everything. All right. That's a wrap for me here. Hit the, like us here, you guys over on getting technical with, uh, wacky Neil Hamilton. Um,

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