We’ve also got an interview with Braze CEO Bill Magnuson.
In this podcast, Motley Fool host Dylan Lewis and analysts Emily Flippen and Bill Mann discuss:
- Hurricane Helene hitting the southeast U.S., and the state of insurance, reinsurance, and black swan events.
- Meta‘s new Orion augmented reality prototype, and the latest drama at OpenAI.
- Why Vail is expecting fewer skiers this winter, gold is boosting Costco, and Accenture is enjoying the generative AI boom.
- Two stocks worth watching: Carnival Cruise Lines and Visa.
Braze CEO Bill Magnuson took a break from the company’s Forge 2024 event to give Motley Fool analyst Tim Beyers a rundown on the company’s latest innovations, how it’s helping marketers harness AI, and the different ways these new offerings play into the company’s growth story.
To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool’s free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our beginner’s guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video
This video was recorded on Sept. 27, 2024.
Dylan Lewis: We’ve got AI in corporate structure, consulting, and customer communications. Motley Fool Money starts now. It’s the Motley Fool Money Radio Show. I’m Dylan Lewis, joining me over the Airwaves, Motley Fool senior analysts Bill Mann and Emily Flippen. Fools, great to have you both here.
Bill Mann: Dylan, how you doing, man?
Emily Flippen: Hey. Good to be here.
Dylan Lewis: I’m doing well. I’m excited to dive in today’s show. We have a lot of different stuff to be talking about an early read on how crowded the ski slopes are going to be this winter. We have a look at how one company is harnessing AI to help businesses better engage with their customers. Of course, you guys are bringing your stocks on the radar, and we’re gonna hit that later in the show. As we taped today Friday, though, Hurricane Helene hit in Florida and the Southeast United States, over 4 million without power in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. I had family down in Tampa checking with them. They are good. Bill, you are a proud North Carolinian. I’m sure this one hits close to home for you.
Bill Mann: In the mountains of North Carolina and, places like Atlanta, which are not normally hit by hurricanes. This one is a little bit unusual because of the size of the storm. The last one that was really like this was Hurricane Hugo, which did almost as much damage inland as it did on the coast. Helene will turn out to have been a historic storm in a lot of ways. For everyone, we hope you the best of that you are safe and that you recover quickly.
Dylan Lewis: We are feeling for the folks out there, particularly the folks that are in the area between Panama City and Cedar Key. I think that region of the Florida Coast Line hit by five Hurricanes in the last eight years. We are a business and investing show, and we do focus on the muddy side of things when it comes to these stories. Bill, I think this is a big reminder of how important the insurance state is for the state of Florida and some of the surrounding ones. Honestly, just how complicated it’s gotten in the last couple of years.
Bill Mann: In Florida, it’s a pretty well-known story, just how imbalanced the insurance business has become in Florida. This is actually the first category four storm to hit the panhandle of Florida since 1851. That’s the magnitude of this storm. One of the things that’s happening is that as people have been moving to Texas have been moving to Florida, the amount of value of land at risk has grown monumentally even over the last decade. This storm will turn out to have been bigger than Andrew. It’ll turn out to have been bigger than Katrina and yet, the value that’s at risk is going to be much higher.
Dylan Lewis: As we think about the state of insurance, Emily, we have seen a lot of insurers decide they aren’t taking this risk on. We have seen companies pull out of the states, other companies not renewing policies. Part of that is a difficulty to price some of these things and be able to react to some of these things because they are so catastrophic. What’s your take on what we’re seeing with insurance in general?
Emily Flippen: With insurance it all comes down to underwriting and expectations and statistical models. They want to make a profit, it’s a narrow profit, but they want to make sure that they’re always bringing in more than they’re expending. I think part of the challenge is that these extreme weather events are no longer a rarity the way they once were. A lot of the statistical models insurance companies are working with are still systematically, potentially, as you see, underpricing the risk of when such hurricanes hit or other extreme events. I actually think Lemonade when they dealt with the Texas deep freeze in 2021, I believe it was, was a great example of this. They said it was the largest catastrophe they’ve ever contended with and “Black Swan event”. Well, these Black Swan events are becoming a little less Black Swaney. They’re becoming a bit more frequent. Insurance companies are yes, getting a bit stricter with how they’re actually issuing and charging for insurance, but also reinsurance businesses. The companies that insure insurance businesses are seeing extreme risk themselves, so they’re increasing their premiums. Across the board, prices for insurance are going up.
Dylan Lewis: Makes sense when we see the property values going up and the risk going up as well, Bill, any final word on the insurance stake.
Bill Mann: You have to be a little bit careful to lay too much of this upon extreme weather events. The weather events are not all that different in frequency or in magnitude than they have been in years past. This is the first major storm that’s hit Florida in a couple of years. There are issues in Florida where they have a very difficult time laying off risk from one market to another because it’s all so heavily concentrated on the coastline. Then you have weird things in the market, like they have had a huge problem with roofing scams in the state that have essentially made it almost impossible to underwrite insurance profitably. Let’s be a little bit careful about assigning reason to all of these different things, but it is a very complex market. Now, I’m just hopeful that the people who need help can get it as quickly as they can.
Dylan Lewis: Our thoughts with the listeners in Florida and in the Southeast, United States, hope everyone’s holding up OK. Also, this week, we saw some news and some updates from Facebook parent Meta. They were showing off their latest hardware ambitions at its annual Connect conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg taking the stage to give a crowd a first look at the company’s prototype Orion Augmented reality glasses. Emily verge writer Alex Heath had a line on this that I absolutely loved. “Orion isn’t a mirage, it’s also not a product”. It’s somewhere in between. I think that is living up to the prototype billing. Some folks had hopes that maybe this would be something that would be sold. Meta saying, no, that is not the case here.
Emily Flippen: I didn’t read this as a product. I didn’t even read it as a mirage or an interesting idea. At first, I thought this was a joke. When I saw the glasses, I thought this was an early April Fool’s Day prank. But no, this is a real product, obviously, that meta at some point, I believe, wants to produce and sell. They did hint that the price would be that of, say, inexpensive smartphone if they ever got it to market. This is a potentially hundred dollar plus product. But as you mentioned, Dylan, as the reviews are saying, right now, it’s not really a product. There isn’t much functionality. It is a I would say cool item. I don’t think anybody would look cool with these giant glasses on their heads. But you have to appreciate that the technology is advancing, and when you’re Meta and you’ve invested billions of dollars in your metaverse ambitions, you need to have something to back up that money spent.
As many jokes as I can have about the way it looks or the lack of functionality today, I do think some of the tech that they are integrating is interesting. The EMG tech, which allows you to move things to your hands without your hands being in frame of the glasses I think is a big game changer for any metaverse ambitions. Again, we are so far away from this being a product that you see anybody on the streets wearing. But to be fair, I also said that about the cyber truck, and people are still driving that around.
Bill Mann: It’s amazing to me. One of the things that they did is they’ve leaned very heavily on a partnership that they have with or Luxoka and Luxoka is the largest glasses designer in the world, and this is what they come up with.
Dylan Lewis: It does look quite a bit like a ray band. The design is not too far off of the classic look. I will give you that. I do think it is interesting with this announcement, Bill, to see them focus a little bit more on the augmented reality side of things rather than the virtual reality side of things, because Meta had made that investment in oculus years back. Most of what we’ve seen as metaverse ambitions have been the much more immersive VR experience. This is a lighter touch, more layer on to reality type approach. Do you think that that might be helpful for that intermediate step of adoption that maybe they need to drive?
Bill Mann: You can see it in that form factor. It’s clearly meant to be something that you can see through so that you can navigate out in the world, regardless, I don’t expect that we’re going to see a bunch of Kurt Rambis look alikes walking around with the massive glasses any time soon. But in the same way that the electric vehicles are now having a, hey, maybe hybrid is a better way to go, this augmented reality step, I think, is probably a very valuable way for Meta to be getting at what they hope is the end goal of full virtual reality being much more widely adopted.
Dylan Lewis: I did not have a Kurt Rambis reference on my Bingo card.Source link
