Power Struggle

[Music] Welcome to the sharp end. I'm Ray Haaparachar, a sustainable equity research analyst for the Rathbone Mortiasset funds. I'm joined as usual by David Coombs and Will McIntosh White, fund managers for the Rathbone Mortiasset funds. Good morning. Good morning. Morning. On this month's episode, we'll be starting our conversation around some key Asian economies. We're talking the likes of South Korea and Taiwan. And whether they're relevant and importance within diversified portfolios is becoming greater than before. Now, our sustainable Mortiasset portfolios recently hit their five-year anniversary having launched in 2021. And the world looks very different now than it did then, especially given how AI has transformed the demand for power over the past few years. So our second topic will be debating what this means for energy, including renewable energy, solar wind, hydra and batteries, and also gas and nuclear going forwards. And then finally, the stock of the month is Rathbone. Spun out of Danher in 2023, this is a water and product quality business focused on mission, critical water treatment and monitoring. Before we get on the show though, here are the usual dos and dones from the team. This podcast is intended for retail and professional investors. Any views and opinions are those of the investment manager and coverage of any assets held must be taken in the context of the Constitution of the Fund and in no way reflect any investment recommendation. Past performance should not be seen as an indication of future performance. All companies mentioned during the podcast are owned by the Mortiasset Funds unless stated otherwise. Now, the statistic that Procter's all to talk about Asian markets on the podcast today is one that is pretty staggering. Last week it was announced that South Korea has leapfrogged the UK to become the world's eighth biggest stock market. Filled mainly by the recent rally in its AI link technology names such as Samsung and SK Heinex, involved in memory chips. Just these two names account for over 40% of the total market of the South Korean index. So David, coming to you first, do you believe this rapid growth reflects a kind of new structural rebalancing in global equity markets and how are you thinking about it when you're looking at the asset allocation to emerging markets versus developed markets such as the UK in our portfolios? Big question. First of all, I think it's quite, that statistic was quite shocking last week. Last week on this week. Yeah. I lose track. It's all moving so fast. But in these fee-briled times it's quite surprising that Skit Starmer hasn't been blamed for that as well. But anyway, this is something we've been looking at for a little while now. I think it's being accelerated by what's going on in the Gulf. And we're, I think we've focused enough on the conflict last two podcasts. But what one of the probably longer term trends that this is kind of supporting is this move towards clear polarization of the Chinese and US economies and how countries are going to align themselves in terms of technology, which I come on to later, but also just pure trades. And obviously the tariff tantrums of, that was earlier this year, wasn't it? Again, it feels like it was years ago. No, it was last year. So it was last year. Yeah, it was last year. It was the big one. I mean, basically Trump, right? Trump has literally made, you know, but the European countries and Asian countries re-appraise where they align. And I think this is, we've talked about Europe in the past. I want to focus on Asia today. And I think what we've been trying to do is think about how do we express this in the investment strategy. And it's not as clear cut as you would think because in the old days you would just go, I overweight Asia and emerging markets. I'm going to focus more on Asia for the moment. But the emerging markets within Asia as well. But frankly, that's not really that helpful right now. And part of the reason is in Korea's a great example where 40% of the cost fee, the Korean stock market, is two stocks, Samsung and SK high-nix, which are linked to, you guessed it, the AI trade in terms of chip manufacturing, et cetera, and tech hardware. And if you look at Taiwan, TSMC, I don't know how big TSMC is in the index, but it is a significant weighting within the emerging markets index as well. So if you're just making a very kind of blunt as allocation shift from US or Europe to Asia, you're kind of just swapping one theme for another AI. And again, I've done that rabbit hole again on AI in this podcast. So you need to be a little bit more careful in how you look to play this kind of shift. You can do it directly through companies that are listed in the States or Europe or UK, which have a big revenue base in the Asian markets. And just to be clear, we're talking age, extra-palon China here in the main, although China will be part of it. Or do you buy stocks listed in the region? And also thinking about the tech position, do you want to be invested in technology companies pivoting to the Chinese tech companies? Are you a supplier to Chinese tech companies? Or do you want to be a supplier into the US tech companies? And can you do both? Will you be allowed to do both in the future? As again, we're seeing, as we've mentioned before, how, even within data centers, the two tech stacks are being separated for security reasons. So there's a number of things to unpack here. But I do think that there are demographic benefits in Asia as well. Some countries still have a growing population. Again, extra-ina-Japan. Vietnam's a good example of a growing economy. And so it's very difficult to get access directly to the Vietnamese stock market. So can we find other ways of getting to that Asian consumer? You're right. I think if you really unpack all of that, it's you're looking at Asia and you think, "Okay, it's got nice structural growth tailwinds, got demographics on its side. It's got increasingly technological leadership, which I think is feeding into this difficult element of, you know, when people are talking about allocating to Asia, what are you actually allocating to? Are you allocating because you are seeing the middle classes on the right? You know, the age-old reason why people used to allocate to China, right? Once a lot of time, there's middle classes around the rise. So we're going to go through that, you know, it's through $10,000 almost where you hit that sort of middle class point. And at that point, you start spending more on discretion. You start buying insurance and things like that. And that was one of the reasons we owned AIA for all those years. And so are you trying to get exposed to that just by allocating to Asia? And of course, you know, we talked before about the dangers of geographical allocation, you know, and it, I guess the point is, it's the same and that we've pointed to the UK a million times. And so you allocate to the UK, you're not getting the UK domestic economy. And the same way, when you're allocating into Asia, I mean, you ask about the EM side, TSMC and SK Harnics and Sam, and I think Sam's making up something like 25% of emerging markets, 25% of that market is just semi conductors on its own. So if you're allocating into that space because you want to merge, I just just want to do, yeah, well, it's actually away from your tech heavy US into EM, you're kind of doubling down on the AI trade. It's just quite a blunt tool, isn't it? To think about regional exposures in that way, and it's something that we've been trying to do more of, is actually understand what is driving the stocks in our portfolio. And as you say, it almost becomes a case of looking at AI as one of those themes, rather than looking at kind of geographic exposure. Yeah, I mean, it's almost like a factorist, you know, that AI waiting in the portfolio. Now, right now, it's the only gaming challenge, it feels like it's anything going up. So, okay, what's the problem? Well, the problem is clear, when the market starts to get a little more nervous of that story, which will happen at some stage, just don't know when. And you haven't got a diversified portfolio whatsoever. You've got a one-bet portfolio. So, I still think wealth in Asia is one theme that we think is worth playing. It's not, I mean, I suppose indirectly AI will have an impact on that, but ultimately, you talked about insurance, but also the other thing one does when we become middle class is start saving. And, you know, we own development bankers think of poor in some of the funds. HSBC, relative new holding for us. I think we talked about in our last podcast. We did, actually, so we won't go over that again, but again, it's that as HSBC pivots towards Asia, that plays into that theme as well. But also, I think, looking at consumer, we've added Alibaba, which again, we talked about in the podcast before. I will look for other names in those sectors, which are more linked probably to GDP growth. Because again, the old fashioned way of looking at asset location was you look for the GDP growth and you follow the money. I think that's what we want to do, but we just want to follow the AI dollar. We want to follow the rest of the dollars at GDP growth as well. Now, that might take a little while to come through, because as we know, with all prices where they are, these are not sectors necessarily in favor right now, but that's when you should be looking. Yeah, I think that's right. And there's definitely been a little bit of weakness being shown up in some of these economies. You know, we talked before about the problems with potential shortages of oil and its various byproducts starting to have an impact on more emerging type economies with those four day weeks being mandated, people would be mandated to work from home. That's all generally likely to be a short term negative for growth. Then you've got an inflation picture on the other side whereby food inflation is typically going to be impacted. That is a large part of the spending basket for Asian economies. I think you could definitely see a pocket of weakness for the more general growth of these economies away from the fact that these semi-conductor names will be driving a huge amount of the growth of South Korea, of Taiwan, but actually away from that, the consumers don't necessarily benefit from that. Obviously they're big employers. As a percentage of GDP versus how many people they employ, it's no way near as much. TSMC is 5% of the workforce. I work for basically TSMC, 5% of Taiwan, which a lot of people, but Taiwan, I don't know what TSMC is of the Taiwan index. It's something crazy, isn't it? Like 25% or something like that. If not more. Yeah. I think you're going to see a slight, or certainly you're seeing at the moment, this like weird situation in Asia where these big tech companies are helping to drive GDP. They're helping to drive markets, but actually maybe just in a short term, the consumer is likely to struggle for the next few months. Of course, we get daily headlines. The latest literally just as we were walking down here, it's just that Iran have put forward another proposal. And our base goes to continue to be. And I don't want to get sidetracked on to it. But it continues to be that there will be a solution here. Yeah, but I think the point is this is a this is not a short term call. Exactly. This is a long term call we want to have more exposure to Asia. We're not, we don't need to rush this because you say there are headwinds, but you need to be looking at it when nobody else is looking at it this way, right? So, and it's uncomfortable, but that's that's the right time to be looking at the sectors that maybe less, well, they're probably, well, they must be under performing, anything that is in day eyes under performing, right? So it's pretty easy in that respect. And so we're continuing to look for names in that space, as I said, but that you can also get exposure to businesses listed elsewhere. H species one example. I mean, AstraZeneca has a business in Asia. It's pretty successful also. And obviously luxury goods, massively out of favor at the moment. We've recently built a full position now in Hermes, which has de-rated significantly again, not expecting that to turn around in three months. It's about being patient. And that's difficult. Patience is kind of not in the ascendancy right now when there's fast money to be made in stocks like Intel. But what we're trying to do is to maintain that diversification, look for longer term, hopefully more structural growth. Yes, but finding structural growth, that isn't AI as well. Well, it is, but AI has become structural growth. And yet it's actually a very cyclical sector historically. So it's still a cyclical sector. It's just the cycle's long. It's just got a big bottlenecks. And you've got, yes, you've got the supply issues right now. But I mean, it is interesting just to go off a slight tangent from a moment. AstraZeneca, it does have a business in China, so it is linked to Asia. Tenuously, he said, but we met with the Rest Relations guys at AstraZeneca, and they don't see AI replacing human clinical trials within the foreseeable future, which is 10 years. They're not even testing AI in place of clinical trials. So you do wonder if some of the expectations around AI are a little over the top, should we say? Now again, that's going to take a while, I think, for reality to hit, but in the meantime, it's important to try and focus on other areas where you have some conviction. And I do think as Asian countries do reassess their relationship with the US, that this is the time to be backing Asia. And again, I think, I think I said this before in the podcast, I do feel that Europe's getting squeezed in the middle again, both from a technology perspective and from an economic growth perspective. And so we're not just playing it. I think Asia and the US economies, overall, are where we want to focus our guns, I suppose, in terms of the next fight from a five-year perspective. What we saw before, kind of earlier on, kind of last year, was some people pivoting to these markets because they thought end of US exceptionalism. And we saw more allocation to Europe, but actually that isn't what we were doing in the portfolios. And as you say, what we've kind of seen is some of that has actually now reversed, and you've seen Europe, as you say, it's in the middle. And I think people kind of realize, no, it's not the end of the US exceptionalism. Yeah, it was the end of US, it wasn't just the end of US exceptionalism, but also the start of European exceptionalism. Some people were talking about, which we didn't agree with, and we trimmed. And I think the realism has come back that Europe has massive fiscal constraints. Yes, there is more defense spending, and there are certain pockets that you want one to get exposure to, but it doesn't look obvious to me right now that Europe started a huge GDP growth spurt, although there are some strategists out there who do think it will be. I'm just not convinced. Oh yeah, normal. And I guess the point is, you know, we've talked about a number of reasons why we remain not so bearish on the European case, which is why we prefer other markets and energy is one of those, right? Europe is structurally disadvantaged versus the US in particular. Yeah, I'd also argue many other, even Asian countries say that import, you know, you've got Chinese country, which is stockpiling oil to make sure if there are shortages, it can get through that. Whereas Europe can get there some stockpiling. Just take the current situation with with British people traveling into Europe and how appallingly rolled out that new digital pass boarding system is. And now you're talking about people's literally talking about not traveling to Europe, which is hitting European tourism, which is like Portugal and Greece already, you've decided to opt out chaos again in the European Union. It just seems self-harm over and over again. So that's not the start of a new capitalist European exceptionalism future from my agency. I was expecting that to be your AOB. We've drifted off. So in honor of our sustainable multi-asset portfolios recently hitting their five-year anniversary time flies when you're having fun in the world of sustainability, I have been brought in to bring a bit of a sustainability angle to the podcast this episode. So the IEA estimates that AI and data centres will contribute about 20% of total global electricity demand growth through to 2030. Now currently renewable supply about 25% of that globally, but it's estimated that about half of this will be met by renewable energy going forwards. This means a huge amount of growth for solar and wind, but also some other forms of power such as gas, hydro, nuclear and batteries. So will, however your thoughts on renewables changed since the sustainable fun launches and how we thinking about power in the portfolio is now quite a big question a lot as happened last time. Wow, okay. You're just to say. Yeah, can you do that in about nine seconds? Just 30 second each. Okay, well if you really take this back to when we launch the funds, I remember when we launched funds, it was, should we say a tough time in the way that the start of 2021, you know, the clean engine index was going through the roof. I think it's sort of ramped up about 8% in February 2021. And I was sad that gang, this feels like a tough time to launch sustainable funds. You know, we're really ramping into this. But when we were putting together the portfolio that we launched with and looking at the renewable space, what we found is was some exciting growth opportunities. And again, this is a big generalization, but there were many companies out there that were looking very expensive. You know, growth was very much priced in if not, you know, overpriced. And many companies were really struggling to generate meaningful profits. You know, there was still quite early stage in this, which felt to us like an element of risk felt to us like not the most attractive companies. And so we built a portfolio that ultimately didn't have a huge amount of exposure to renewables. We had SSE in there, which would probably our largest renewables play mainly because it was cheap because it's got transmission business, it's got renewables business. And so it's quite an attractive way of getting some exposure to this without overpaying. And we've been through the various cycles. I mean, obviously since then, I mean, it was a point last year where I think clean energy index had halved since we launched the funds. All around when Trump was, you know, rolling back on all the credits and the inflation reduction act. I mean, most of the damage had been done before Trump got in, but I think Trump sort of finished this basically double down. And to be fair, the sectors had a bit of recovery from those lows. And I think when you look at this, we understand there is a massive structural tailwind for electrification, right? And you've got to get away from EVs because whatever the rollout comes out, yeah, that's part of it. But if you look particularly again, looking at the EU actually who are renewing their electrification push right now, under I think it's called assistance EU, you know, having gone through 2022 as well, Europe again in [BLANK_AUDIO] particular realized that it needed to push further into renewables to reduce its reliance on Russian gas and fossil fuels generally because it has so little control over those. I think we mentioned last time they pivoted. Unfortunately, it was also to Cotari LMG, which now got massive issues because of what's happening in the Gulf. So again, you've got this sort of will from government to push towards that companies or also trying to try to reduce their overall fossil fuel footprint. And then added to that more recently, you've now got an incredible demand driver from data sectors. And data centers are very keen for the amount of energy that they consume in order to run these data centers to be seen as being, I'm going to use word clean. Because there is a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of looseness around that term. And I think driven by the fact is clean, though, isn't it? Well, gases is, depending on who you are, but yeah, many are referring to gases more clean and nuclear, of course, is becoming a big part of the solution. And renewables is benefiting significantly, right? Particularly solar, but it is still less reliable. And particularly if you're a data center, you need that reliability. So then there's a massive market for backup power, companies like Blue Energy, which we don't own, seems significant demand for their battery technology. So you've now got a number of incredible structural tailwinds behind this space. I wouldn't say they're all likely to be massive winners, but we've looked at cherry pick names where part of their businesses are benefiting from this, whether it's Siemens, which we had done for some time ago, with Schneider Electric feeding into electrification and benefiting from the AI rollout. And it feeds through into, you know, still NSSE, we have National Grid as well, transmission and incredibly important part of the story here. And then we have Wisconsin Energy, which is quite an interesting one in itself, whereby, you know, Wisconsin are essentially helping to power data centers being built by Microsoft in Wisconsin. And I think there's been so many negatives from a sentiment perspective of the whole space. And obviously we, we launched, towards the tail end of the ESG bubble, if I can call it that. And of course, people can flate ESG with sustainable, wrongly, and green. And people use all these kind of terminology. Let's just call it the ESG bubble. I mean, there are some similarities with AI bubble, but let's not go down that route. And the two, I think, I think. Yeah. You're welcome. You're welcome. So it was the tail end of that. And as you say, in some ways, we were lucky because we didn't take all that hot money. We would like to have the hot money. Don't get me wrong. We did that. We had people who genuinely want to invest in line with their values. And so our funds have actually grown over the period rather than contracts. That's been really pleasing. But at least people who own it really want to own it. But if you think back to just before we launched the funds, you know, people with talking about sustainable investing has been a massive growth opportunity. It's going to outperform non ESG type funds and it's it tracked all that hot money. And then it went completely the way. And then Trump kind of doubled down on and then DE and I somehow became part of sustainability in the ESG as well. And it all becomes hugely negative. And companies taking a foot off the gas. So to speak in terms of making announcements around their carbon capture programs or whatever you've seen, again, the oil companies pivot away BP obviously controversy in the news. Was it a week or so ago? I would argue we're back into kind of reality again. And we've always said this that the only time these companies will actually be worth investing in is when they are, they are worth investing for financial perspective. And you need the tailwinds of that structural growth, not just because sadly it's to make the planet a better place, right? We're pretty cynical about this. We don't think people actually adopt these technologies until they're efficient, which is why he pumps have been slowed for adoption, etc. Right. So I think we're kind of getting into this place now where in many cases the renewable energy is starting to be attractive from an economic perspective. Companies are seeing efficiencies. And of course in data centers, what's hugely important is they cannot go down, right? You have to be up 24/7, 365 days a year. And so having a mixture of energy sources is vital to support that need. And as you say, that's what we've seen. We've seen that the hyperscalers are basically just throwing everything at it because they can't have power being the limiting factor to be the AI winner, right? And as you say, we are a bit cynical and probably when we're looking at the hyperscalers they have these clean energy commitments that they need to meet. So clearly renewable energy is going to have to form part of the solution of this. But they're also looking at gas, nuclear, other forms of energy. The thing that's quite interesting actually is that solar is actually the cheapest form of energy with or without tax credits. It's about 30 to 40% cheaper to adding gas to your grid. So looking at from a short time perspective, the hyperscalers, they don't really care where they're going to get this from. Go down, solar, put as much of that onto the grid as they can, then you just move on to the forms of energy. But I guess the problem is each form of energy has its positives and its negatives. So solar, you're going to start running out of land. You don't like it in the cost-volts? Yeah. And then you've got all the intimacy issues. Like, well, we're all was touching on and then you've got to start thinking about gas again. That's why they're thinking about nuclear. And so it is kind of all of the above. They're not kind of wedded or tied to one form of energy necessarily. But also it takes so long to create nuclear power, right, in terms of building new infrastructure. It uses a 20, 20, 20, 25 store. So we're in a situation now where there needs to be some quicker winds and I think that does play to the renewables. And I also, again, going back to the current situation straight to our moves, that also in effect really promotes use of renewables, right, because it's still staggering to me, you know, I've been in this industry for 40 years. We're still talking about oil prices having the impact on global economy that they are. If this isn't a catalyst for more investments in renewables, I don't know what is. It's a wake up call again for Europe. And not just renewables, but the grid as well. Absolutely. It's really interesting, something like every time you take one gigawatt of thermal energy off the grid, you need to add kind of four to five gigawatts of renewable energy onto the grid because of the intermittency issues, which means you need a huge expansion of the grid to actually move. And to listen to something just for people who might not be familiar with that. So essentially the fact that with wind energy or solar energy, clearly they're not 24/7 kind of base load power. Sometimes the sun is shining, sometimes the sun isn't shining, sometimes the wind isn't blowing. And as we said with data centers, you need the 24/7 power. So even though Europe's added so much renewable energy to its grid, there'll be times where you've got negative power prices because neither of those things are happening. That's where you've got to plug the gap. It's about the mix exactly and we want to invest in all of the mix really, including oil. So not in sustainable funds, obviously, or else not in those funds, but in our maps. And so this is not just a theme for the sustainable funds, this is also a theme we're playing in the core funds as well. Yeah. Because it's got caterpillar, for example, in the core funds. Exactly. And so both Asia and renewable energy are two key themes. Not AI, although as you said, power is linked to AI. Not so much in Europe though. Not so much in Europe where the story we've seen for likes of S.S. C. National Grid, Eon, it's less about AI. It's more about electrification across other areas too. Like you've said, you know, electric vehicles, heat pumps, these are all really important stories as well. The message being there are more than one structural driver out there and you want to expose them to more. Find them. Finally, let's turn towards a stock that is also a beneficiary of the AI in particular, to spend, but through a different manner and also has some other structural tailings behind it. Barralto. Barralto is a leader in water treatment, water monitoring and cooling related solutions, as well as operating in product quality and innovation. This means it provides water treatment programs for cooling towers and direct chip liquid cooling, serving 200 plus data center sites globally. But aside from this, its growth is also driven by the greater need and regulations for treating and analysing water more safely. So will what do we like about the company and why do we think it's well placed for the future? Yeah. So it's relatively new holding, again held in the two maps, I think, probably held it here year or so now. So maybe that's not that new. Depends on your time for us in these days, doesn't that? And it's relatively new company in that it was spun out of Danaheer, that you mentioned out in the intro a few years ago, 2023 and it's two core businesses. You right point out water quality and product. What do we like about it? Well, one, you've got nice structural tailwind again behind water. There is a big recognition that water is an extremely scarce resource that seems to be in terms of supply almost seems to be going down and increasingly don't want to keep talking about data centers, but they do use a huge amount of water. out of water, that water is required to cool these systems. If you look at the US more broadly as well, they do have a clean water problem. A lot of that has come from also pollution. You've got things like PFAS, which are these sort of forever chemicals, which are finding their way into our water systems. You see increasing regulation around things like water and water quality. It has great public perception as well, I'd say, on these issues. You've really seen that ramp up, whether that's through social media or just great roadwaters. There's a half-full programme, wasn't there some months ago as well. Yeah, so that's leading some of that as well. It is. And to say, they provide instruments to essentially monitor and test the water. They then provide a lot of what we call consumables that go with that, so not only do to sell them the instrument, so raise a razor blade model if you like, sell them the razor and then you sell them the razor blades over and over again. So nice, high recurring revenue. So 60% of this business has recurring revenues, so you know, benefiting from the increasing amount of testing, but it's not sort of rely on big sort of sales of equipment on occasion, which can make revenues really lumpy. So quite attractive from that perspective. As I say, it has a data centre angle, you know, I met them in the US last year. They're making a point they're not going all in on data centres. You know, yes, it's a nice driver for a part of their business, but they're not completely reliant on it for their growth drivers going forward, but they are very embedded with many of their customers, including if you want to build out a data centre. You know, obviously the permissions that you need to get to do that because of the impact that they can have on, whether it's your your nimby's or the environment itself. And obviously you want to go to Rato because they can then demonstrate how they're going to manage the water situation. But what I think is interesting is, you know, this is a water business. It's come down in valuation in terms of the multiple that people have put on this business, even though in general water businesses have been put on sort of a higher multiple generally, but it's also got this other part of the business, which I think is really interesting, which is around product quality, where it serves the packaging industry and essentially provides all the equipment you need to put the markings on packaging. So that's the marking, the coding, the colour sounds quite basic, but actually it's much more complicated than you think, you know, increasingly consumer goods companies are changing their packaging, they're innovating, they're making a patching thinner, they're using different materials, lighter materials, more ecologically friendly materials, in order to be able to put the printing on that can be quite difficult. There is a lot of regulation over what has to be put on a package, so it needs to be absolutely right. And they've got a traceability business now, which goes into sort of, you know, the codes that go on various products, so that if you send something out and it needs to be recalled, you can obviously find it very quickly, is that traceability is incredibly important. So it's a business that kind of goes under the radar, but it's growing quite nicely, very much works in markets that are due opolis or or a guppoli, so there aren't many players in this market, the decent barriers to entry. And so it's very well run business, and I say it's one that we feel we can sort of tuck away in the sustainable funds and should be a nice compounder over the years. So moving on to the final part of the show, any of the business, where we each get to have a bit of a moan about something that has really annoyed us this month, I'm going to start because mine's kind of just one word, which is the weather. That's just my A/OB, some rise. The fact that we're in May, and it's still just not very sudden. Oh, I think that's one harsh couple of the words speed all right. Like a few days of good weather, but it's like it's just not, I just don't think it's good enough. Quite frankly. And you're often pressed up. This was really. I know to Edinburgh next week, and I looked at the forecast since about eight degrees and raining, so I just thought I'd be very optimistic to be honest. There's a frost in Scotland this morning. David over to you. So I was at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival at the weekend. Of course you are. Into 15 gigs. I feel quite exhausted frankly. And my A/OB is people who talk all the way through a concert. So I was at the ABC's concert for those of you under the age of 40 that's abandoned from the 1980s. And I had three people sat behind me who kept saying how they were their biggest fans, how they knew all the songs, how they how each song was their favourite. And they talk through every single one. This is a known phenomenon apparently since Covid people just don't have Etica in lack of self-awareness. Sinners as well. Yeah. I mean. Before we say people just talk throughout the whole movie checking their phone. Yeah, it's just absolutely outrageous. So there were lots of looking around and cutting going on because we're very British. If my wife hadn't been there, I'd have been a little bit stronger. A little bit stronger. A little bit. I would have made another friend. Tracey sort of yeah, keeps me under control but I did. I did give them a withering look. Very British. Will. Mine's very live and it's Vettbills. So sadly one of my dogs was part of the problem. That's what you've got. No sympathy. Yeah. As we've taken his poll yesterday, he said to get that staple up and I was a little bit expensive. I thought, okay, not disaster. Anyway, spent the night not putting any weight on it. I had to take him back in today. I got the call from the other half to tell me quite how expensive the bill is because he's done something to his other leg as well. And I think Vettbills just keep going up. And I think it's partly because P companies have kind of consolidated and now they've got pretty significant pricing power. But obviously going to pay the bills that still feeds into our sort of thematic of companion animals. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a bit like we take your car in forever too. They always find a fault. You just ignore it. It's solved itself. Exactly. Thank you for joining us and we hope your join us again for the next monthly installment of the shark end. If you didn't listen at the time, please feel free to go back and listen to our earlier episodes. Last month, Will, David and Hannah discussed Iran and the Middle East and how investors have been reacting commodities, including oil, gas, gold and silver. And finally, HSPC, the well-known global bank we recently bought. You can subscribe to the podcast on all major podcasting platforms. And please don't forget to hit the subscribe or follow button and rate and reviewers as well. If you'd like to hear more about the Wrathburn Morty Asset Funds, please speak to your usual Wrathburns contact, your financial advisor or visit the website at www.wrathburns.com/am.