Investment Banking Q1 League Tables, SMFG-Jefferies, SpaceX IPO & Whoop’s $10B Raise

Hello and welcome back to the Market Maker podcast and hope everyone has had a great Easter. I always feel a little bit weird saying that because we record this, it's not even Easter yet.

Yeah. How was your Easter?

My Easter was fantastic actually. I mean, who knows what might happen between now and the reality of Easter happening, but yeah, we're actually recording this pre-Easter, even though it's dropping Now, so forgive us if there's been a monumental shift in the M&A world since. But in this episode, we are going to talk about a few things. End of Q1, so appropriate probably to have a quick look at the latest Investment Banking Advisory League tables, any movers and shakers there. Also, quick word on SpaceX, just given the launch that we saw in the US last week. And from our two more deep dives, we'll talk about Sutomo Mitsui Financial Group, SMFG. I saw that wry smile there while you were announcing it. And they've been linked with Jefferies, the elite boutique firm. So that potentially M&A deal was surprising when it came out, but the market's early excitement faded pretty quick. As people were kind of refocusing on regulatory cultural risk hurdles that pretty much will, I'd say, likely never see that deal go through. But we'll unpack that a little bit. Then the other one was a big funding round with IPO ambitions in sight was Whoop. I know there's a lot of Whoop users out there, you included, which I will grill shortly on your metrics, Piers, to see, uh, How you're performing, but they've raised $575 million at a $10.1 billion valuation. And we'll look at why or what their ambitions are and what they're looking to achieve with that new funding round. But let's dive in and let's have a quick look at the league tables. Firstly, I don't think that there's any real surprise to see who's leading the pack. It remains relatively unaltered from the dominant trio. So at the top by A very large distance actually is Goldman Sachs at the moment. They've completed 106 deals. This was as of the 1st of April. The actual deal value there, $424.8 billion. Second place was JP Morgan, and they've already done $265.7 billion. So Goldman's really taking charge there. But again, that's generally the pattern. And then MS in third, not far behind JP. So very much still they're the dominant forces. I guess the ones then on the elite boutique side, which are quite interesting, would be the likes of Evercore and Centerview Partners. So if you think about the way of which they tend to win mandates, it's very much more based on high-value strategic ones. Where they're very much specialist areas. So they're not looking for volume, they're looking to add expertise and thus value premium on the back of that. So at the moment, whatever, Evercore is 6th, you've got Rothschild 7th, Centerview 8th, Lazard 9th. So they make up a good portion of the table actually at the moment. Some other movers, Citi, City have climbed to 4th. Uh, let me have a look. Year to date, this time last year, where were they? So they were similar, 4th, but I guess one big mover, Evercore, who are 6th, they were 12th this time last year on a like-for-like basis. Rothschild, who are 7th, were 10th last time out. So they've had a good start to proceedings. Um, in terms of the geographies, The US leading the rebound, so year on year up 40%. Europe also picking up, and it's a bit of a flip from where we were previously. Asia ex-Japan is now lagging, so pretty uneven in terms of the global split. But this is it. And maybe given your macro expertise, a comment with you on the league tables. Was that global M&A, I saw Bloomberg running a piece, they were talking about it's up circa 20%. So values has hit $1.3 trillion. That's a record. It's the strongest start to the year on record.

Yeah.

But this is Q1 and what's just happened at the end of Q1. So what are your thoughts then on deal activity? The oil move, like we've had obviously what looks like in the rearview mirror, quite a strong start.

Yeah.

What do you think though, going forward for Q2?

Well, it'll be dependent obviously on what happens in the Gulf, but yeah, we've had that little sweet spot in Q1 where back then, I mean, Q is only the 2nd of April, but back in like the midpoint of Q1, we were looking for further interest rate cuts. So I'd say, you know, a lot of, you know, one of the key levers for deal flow is interest rates, high or low. You know, the cost of financing an acquisition is obviously one of the critical factors and variables that'll determine flow, right? And we've seen rate cuts in, in like 2025, and we were expecting more rate cuts in 2026. So the cost of financing dropping, Meaning then, and then when you couple that with the fact there's been so much pent-up demand as we've had a really high interest rate environment, 2023, 2024, you know, where deals weren't getting done as a result, there was a lot of stuff in the backlog. And I think Q1 of 2026 was that, right, further rate cuts coming, let's get through some of the backlog. So the deal flow really ramped up. Now what happens from here obviously will depend on how inflationary this Persian Gulf conflict becomes. And we are expecting the ECB to hike rates now at their next meeting. Nothing quite like that from the Fed or the Bank of England where they're more, right, we're going to stop, we're not going to cut anymore, but they haven't gone into, right, we're going to hike territory yet. So I think that's the kind of main pivot here, if you do get the US-Iran conflict extending, it really does feed through into inflation for the medium term, and then the Fed turn hawkish. Well, then I think you can start to really dampen your deal flow expectations for, you know, certainly the second half of 2026. Now, obviously the opposite could happen. The conflict doesn't last very long, Fine. The Fed doesn't have to hike rates. Maybe they even get back to an idea of cutting, in which case, fine. You know, you can have a really solid second half of the year to follow on from a really strong start.

I was just having a look to wrap on the league tables on the equity capital markets part. So IPOs. And actually, who do you reckon's leading the global IPO bookrunner ranking? It's not someone who you would think. Goldman's is second.

Okay. So it's not—

Third is Cantor Fitzgerald.

Oh, wow. Huh.

So who do you think is first?

Well, I'm guessing it's not Morgan Stanley or JP Morgan.

Morgan Stanley is fifth. JP Morgan is sixth.

Who is first? I don't know.

Btick LLC.

Excuse me? Come again?

Btick is a global financial services firm specializing in investment banking, institutional trading, research, and related brokerage services.

You sure you're looking at the right league table? I mean, I've literally, I mean, I've never heard of them.

Well, I'm just having a look online because I obviously have not done enough prep that was necessary for this episode. Which is the BTEC LLC is owned by Condor Trading LP, the parent, and Goldman Sachs.

Oh, okay.

Maybe it's like not as unique as it would appear.

It's Goldman in disguise.

Exactly. But I mentioned IPOs specifically because, well, we say, we joked at the beginning, like what might have changed since this episode drops from a recording? Well, just happens to be a small space shuttle orbiting around Earth at the moment. So hopefully all is well still by the time this goes out. But what was interesting last week, we had SpaceX filed confidentially for their initial public offering. This was according to sources, and I just thought this was classic banker marketing strategy, just given what happened last week with the launch we had in the US of that spacecraft. So perfect timing for Elon's bankers to drop them this submission for their draft IPO registration with the SEC. One interesting thing I saw there was, I think it was 21, I don't think it was confirmed, but 21 banks are working on this, this IPO in one deal. Yeah. In one deal, which is incredible. But obviously the size of this is, well, for one, The talk seems to have moved. I mean, we were talking about before the initial, the company SpaceX acquired xAI, that deal valued the enlarged entity, remember at $1.25 trillion.

Yeah.

That number seems to have magically added another $500 billion. We're now at $1.75 trillion according to sources. And so, you know, juicing the optics alongside this incredible mission that we saw launched last week. But yeah, one of the interesting things was Bank of America, Citi, Goldman's, JPMS. That's your cluster of senior roles on the IPO that are running the book. However, what is interesting, because it's such a beast of a deal, you've also got Barclays in charge of the UK. Deutsche and UBS are working the European orders. RBC, Royal Bank of Canada, is managing share orders from Canada. Mitsuiho Financial Group working the Asian order. Macquarie Group working the Aussie orders as well. So full board global investor attack here going on to juice this.

All aboard.

Including your mom and pop. Because one thing I saw here was, this is according to the Bloomberg source, apparently the allocation for retail investors, they're anticipating a 30%.

Yeah.

I mean, that feels like what you would expect, I guess. I mean, with Trump, with Elon involvement.

Yeah, well, exactly. I don't know what the averages are. That's definitely very high. That's a very high proportion. But of course, he's got such a monster platform via X and I don't know how many followers has he got on X? It's like 200 million or something, isn't it? So yeah, I mean, just a huge platform to reach the masses. And so yeah, why not tap that to kind of beef up the demand side for the stock? And that's why maybe, yeah, can he get $1.75 trillion valuation? Well, if he he juices it via his X platform, maybe he can.

And then at the same time, why not just hedge yourself by having a dual class structure for your share listings? So, yeah, so you can stay in control, get the same level of treatment as everyone else. Yep.

Yep. It's going to be the big, it's going to be the, we'll probably be talking about the SpaceX IPO on every episode from now until, I don't know, the end of the year, probably. So, uh, yeah, watch this space, but obviously it's gonna be the big deal.

But yeah, and to guide us through there, to pilot the shuttle through that SpaceX IPO launch is gonna be Steven Barnett returning to the show as well in due course. So back by popular demand. Yeah. Breaking news.

Breaking news. You've just dropped a big breaking news item there.

Yeah. Stephen's coming back. You know, he's had his time to become a father for the first time. So, obviously congrats to him and his wife, Beth, but he's coming back to the show. So that would be, I'm sure a lot of people will be pleased with that. So, you're going to have to wait maybe a few weeks and then he'll be here ongoing. So, let's dive into this first story of two then, this one about 2 banking giants, or maybe not. We talk about Jefferies a lot. I didn't quite realize how big the Japanese firm was in comparison, but perhaps you could pitch this deal to me first and what's happened and why.

Yeah, this is, so you had to go at pronouncing it at the top of the show there, but I think you kind of butchered it. But Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, let's just go with SMFG. So they're Japan's second largest lender, like big, big, big kind of retail and commercial bank. Okay. Massive balance sheet, huge loan book. Okay. So they're the beast in this deal. They're valued at about $125 billion. Then you got Jefferies, who, yeah, you would put in the sort of, well, would you call them boutique? I mean, they're obviously large in their own right, but They're only valued at $8 billion. Now their valuation has dropped quite sharply over the last couple of months, which is why this chat has come around because, ooh, maybe SMFG are looking to, maybe they're sniffing a bit of a bargain here. We'll talk about why it's dropped in a second. But yeah, this is obviously a strategic play for two reasons, both geographically. So you've got a Japanese big massive lender. And then you've got Jefferies, which is predominantly a kind of US-based investment bank. And so they specialize in cross-border M&A and equity capital markets, right? So it's a really good, from a strategic point of view, from a synergy point of view, you know, lots of revenue and kind of geographical synergies going on. Off the back of the news, the Jefferies share price jumped 9%. I think it ticked up to about 10% at one point. But so obviously a very positive reaction there from the Jefferies share price perspective. It did, and I mentioned that they're about $8 billion valuation. It has dropped quite sharply. So from a share price point of view, kind of closed out. If you go back to the start of the year, they were trading at about $66 per share. They trade on the New York Stock Exchange. By the time we got to middle of March, it was 36. So that's a massive— 66 down to 36 is obviously a huge pummeling. And actually, from a long-term perspective, that put their stock back at— well, we were trading that levels back in 2021, actually. So obviously they've been beaten up a little bit. Couple, you know, some reasons Behind that, just quickly on that side, they're a little bit vulnerable to a few kind of situations. So one is around this company called Market Financial Solutions. So they're basically exposed, which is a UK mortgage lender. This is kind of creeping into the realms of private credit here, and we haven't really covered it yet on the pod. We perhaps should do, but talk about the private credit space and how actually it's, whilst you've got Macro news kind of dominating. It's kind of not enabling column inches to be covering actually what seems to be a little bit of a brewing problem, you know, in the private credit space. But anyway, part of that is this UK mortgage lender Market Financial Solutions. Jefferies has got £103 million exposure to that. There's another situation around First Brands. Um, which was basically, again, another private credit fund that's gone bankrupt. So Jefferies had a $40 million exposure to that. There's also a Western Alliance dispute going on. Um, so another US lender, basically Western Alliance is suing Jefferies for $126 million alleging breach of contract and basically fraudulent shenanigans. This is after Jefferies refused to pay a loan tied to the First Brands bankruptcy, right? So there, look, there's a few things going on that's meaning that Jefferies is coming under a bit of pressure from a kind of valuation point of view. So in swoops SMFG to maybe try and get a bit of a bargain here. But this isn't anything new, right? Because SMFG, they already own 20% of Jefferies. They've been partnering up for years, I think since 2021. SMFG took a stake, so they're 20% holders already. Further since then, they've actually launched a joint venture in Japan itself. So there's obviously a relationship here from the past. And so look, I think this news just broke. It's hard to say how much validity, to be honest, there is in this. I think maybe it's a bit of a reach from a journalist point of view, I would say.

Well, what's interesting though is that the shares did move though. So yeah, well, this is it. There's probably some validity in it for, there's people reacting to this and this isn't, you know, your mum and pop jumping on their system trading these things. This is probably some flow going through it. But one thing I, am I right in what I saw? You mentioned there that they already own 20%, but their voting power is totally different.

Wow.

How does this work? And then how does this start to unpack then why this deal's unlikely to probably ever come to fruition?

Well, so Bloomberg themselves reported that SMFG had no immediate plan to acquire Jefferies, by the way. So it's kind of all simmering down this thing. And basically the Bloomberg article was citing obstacles around deeper integration. Primarily amongst those is regulatory factors. So yes, they own 20% of the stock, but their voting power is capped at 5%. And this is basically because of US regulations. So if they've got voting rights above 5%, then the US basically They move into the territory of being a US, what's called a US bank holding company territory. That just means then if they move into that space, then the Federal Reserve then has oversight over the whole group's broader global operations. Okay. So to repeat, if they move north of 5% on the voting right front, basically the Fed gets access to everything. So from a regulatory point of view, that's obviously a huge barrier. Also then there's other issues that get in the way of this, which is like cultural fit. You know, you've got a very, very, very stable, dare I say dull, boring, you know, retail commercial bank behemoth in Japan. And then you've got this, you know, lightweight, agile, you know, quite aggressive deal maker in the US. And so I'm very entrepreneurial kind of spirit and culture there. So I mean, you couldn't get to opposites. And so yeah, kind of mashing those two together might be tricky.

And there's some historical precedence for this, right? When Nomura acquired a bunch of Lehman Brothers assets in 2008, that whole, that didn't go well. Yeah. So that cross-border integration, culture clashes, one, you're absolutely right. That hierarchy-heavy consensus centralization Japanese methodology compared to the quick, aggressive, agile Americans. And then also what can happen when it's so polar opposite in culture like that? Talent just leaves because you're like, what? No, I don't want part of that.

Well, and so to further exacerbate that risk, the Jefferies model at the moment, their senior leadership are major shareholders. So you've got this situation that if the deal happens and then that culture fit's not there, well then these senior leaders may well just take the money, cash out, and, you know, sail off into the sunset, leaving Jefferies with a bit of a vacuum up at the leadership level. So again, that's obviously a risk from a kind of, you know, operational point of view post-deal. So look, there's lots of things going on here. I think this is just a little bit of a flare-up, a journalist kind of getting a little excited over probably not too much. I think ultimately this is a long-term relationship. The joint venture they've set up in Japan, I think is like the beginnings of, yes, we understand there's a massive cultural divide here. Let's do a little, let's just do a little joint venture thing. To start with, just to try and A, use that as a bit of an experiment, but also B, try and get a little closer together as two units. And so look, I think this is something that will run and run. Obviously they're 20% owners of the company already, so they're not going anywhere, but whether they actually buy the whole lot or not, yeah, I mean, I think maybe, but that's probably a way off down the track, I would say.

Alright, well let's talk about our second story, which is Whoop, who announced a $575 million Series G funding.

Oof.

That round then gave the company a $10.1 billion valuation. I thought this was quite interesting because looking at the wearable health tech market, I mean, that's been a market to be in.

Yeah.

One of the other ones that a lot of people who, who, who can, who use these products will know is there was this current announcement follows the funding round for Oura, which is the more ring-based rather than wrist-wearing one. And that was for $900 million financing. So yeah, seems like that whole area of appetite for wearable health technology. So what does that mean? Biometric tracking, performance optimization, broader health monitoring is definitely something that's growing. I know Amazon, I think, were in this space and it was all the Fitbit rage. That seems to have gone a bit quiet. I guess AI has kind of put that, parked that item for a moment. But some of these other, I guess, specialized companies like Whoop and Oura have definitely come to the forefront. So Yeah. Yeah. But maybe we could have a look at the investor base and some of the marketing around it, because I thought that was particularly interesting and this kind of intersection that I feel as a product that they're really leveraging, which is this area of where they get the money from and then this sort of celebrity athlete endorsement and then also the medical community. Rather than stamping it, seems to be the full, yeah, they've really worked hard here to complete the proposal, if you like.

Well, they've had a few goes at this. You said Series G. I mean, I don't even, I mean, I don't even think I've ever heard of a Series G, but basically, you know, you have your, just a little backstory, sorry, unrelated to Root, but obviously as you're setting up your new business as a venture, right, you have seed capital. And then you'll have Series A, Series B, Series C. Each of these series is a new funding round. Of course, if you need funding, that means external investment coming in. Obviously that means you're not profitable yet as a business. And so a lot of this tech kind of first business is where, you know, you're talking about profitability. You know, that idea is like so far out into the future. Therefore, you need funding rounds after funding rounds after funding rounds to kind of get you to be big enough and your revenue large enough to, to then turn the balance and you become profitable and then you can be self-funding, right? So Series G, they've done this so many times, they are now absolutely amazing at it. And as you say, you look at that roster of who's stepping up to finance this latest round and it's like perfect. As you say, you've got from the financial investor side, you've got some really big hitters, but then you've got celebrity endorsement, sports. I mean, actually, do you want to go through the list of these sports celebs that are on the bandwagon?

There's a couple you'll recognize and there's a couple of surprises in there. So, you know, two of the probably biggest is Cristiano Ronaldo.

Yeah, I've heard of him. Yeah.

LeBron James.

Mm-hmm.

Rory McIlroy.

Yeah.

Piers Curran.

Uh, how are they paying you for wearing that Whoop, by the way? Sorry, I'm contractually not allowed to disclose that. Um, although you say wearing it, I mean, well, I will do a bit of a bear case later. But I don't wear it anymore. Just got a bit bored of it, to be honest.

Okay. Well, let's circle back to that.

Come back to that.

Because I wear a Garmin watch.

Okay.

Yeah. And we can ask the audience what their preferences are. But yeah, on the, so there's 3 legs of this as the financial investors, which you mentioned. So just on that point, what I thought was very interesting was there is some big established hitters on there and also a lot of money flowing out of the Middle East.

Yeah.

So the Qatar Investment Authority, Saudi-related authority intermixed. What I thought was interesting is people like Glade Brook, which you might not have heard of.

Who are they? I haven't heard of them.

Big player in tech growth capital. They were early investors in Stripe, SpaceX, Revolut. So you've got this—

Nice.

The investor base is really nicely diverse in that way. Tech-oriented, but then just the old-fashioned money, if you like, getting invested as well. The other parts of that then were how also what was quite interesting is part of their strategy then is building out a bigger, more tangible presence in the GCC.

Yeah.

So the Gulf Cooperation Council, that sort of political, economic, military alliance where you have the Arab nations. Saudi, Kuwait, UAE, and so on. Interesting then, then that on the flip side for the optics, obviously someone like those countries, Saudi Arabia, you then get Whoop, for example, setting up their labs, their first international performance R&D facilities in those countries.

There you go.

You get a coup from a technical perspective in those home nations. Oh, by the way, can you invest a couple hundred mil in my my new funding round.

Well, but it also makes sense, like, as what are Whoop going to use this money for? I mean, obviously they're not profitable, so they need money for working capital to run their business, but it's also like investing in future growth. And so one of the things, and there's plenty of growth, we often use this word TAM. What's the size of the total addressable market? You know, in theory, what's the, you know, if if Whoop won the 100% of the global market share, then what theoretically is the revenue of this business, right? So we talk about TAM, total addressable market. At the moment, they're very, you know, they're very US-focused, right? They've got very little penetration outside of the US. And so it's going out after some of that international TAM and it's looking at, especially affluent slash health-conscious international markets. And so yeah, that geographical scale point is a really key part of this narrative for this latest funding round.

How do you boost your TAM? If I was working on the pitch book, if I was part of the investment banking team, I'd be like, okay, so why don't we get like Niall Horan?

Yeah.

To be one of our and endorse our products. So now we can say that every— Niall Horan is the One Direction guy, isn't he?

That's correct.

So why don't we— how big was One Direction at their peak? Okay. Yeah. That's our— we'll add that to the TAM. Now we've got an extra couple of hundred million fans out there globally. So yeah, that kind of elite performance, like athletic that brings in like the technical aspirational component. Then you get the global culture element with music and fashion, these sorts of things. But then the other kind of third leg of the stool is the medical community.

Right.

Because how credible can it be? Like the data that you are extracting. I mean, that's the overall goal in the future, and I'm sure AI will have a big part to play in this space. And it's interesting actually when I, when you hear about Garmin, Oura, Whoop, you don't really hear AI a lot. Yeah. Maybe because it's just so challenging from a cost perspective. And I am always a little bit disappointed by the metric output from a lot of these products being quite superficial level.

Right.

We'll talk about that in a sec. But on the medical investors, Abbott and Mayo Clinic, so the latter I think is kind of like the established private sector body in America, they're also participating. So particularly important then when you're trying to position your business, that it's not, you know, it's not just this hardware. It does have a broader health platform. It acts as preventative care, health system transformational. I mean, if you think about, I'd love to see the IPO book and maybe we could look at it on the filing. But I, I would be positioning this saying this is transformational for every man, woman, and child, particularly in a healthcare system like America. Yeah. Get one of these devices and it could be, it could change your life literally.

And it's like, it is the kind of, um, it's, it's less, yeah, I guess people think about it as a fitness tracker, but it's definitely not. It's not, it's like, it's very much like, it's almost like a personal operating system for your body. In a way. And there's these like mega trends around, you mentioned there, preventative health, but then like consumer and enterprise health data is another kind of mega trend. And then this whole idea about longevity of life is another big trend at the moment. So, you know, Whoop kind of fits into all of this stuff, but you are mentioning hardware, but I, analysts are basically looking at this rather than hardware, it's more like subscription revenue. You know, it's actually ARR, annual recurring revenue. And so it's basically, there's hardly, there's not much upfront device cost, right? A consumer who's getting a Whoop is not so much about there's a big cost to get this thing onto your wrist. It's more about the monthly membership and obviously data insights that come with that, right? And that's where that, so it's more of a, I would say it's more of a Netflix than a Fitbit.

Can I, can I ask you though, like I wear a Garmin, you buy the device, that's it.

Yeah.

There is no monthly subscription, right? Psychologically, as a user then of Whoop, how does that feel in terms of the monthly commitment over just one-time price?

How does it feel?

It feels like value for money, or do you not even think about it? Like a Netflix subscription, you don't think about it.

It feels really cheap, so I'm just gonna do it. Because there's not hardly any upfront cost. There's not like a Garmin where you gotta go, wow, bloody hell, you gotta spend multiple hundreds of pounds to get that. The hurdle, that initial hurdle's huge for a Garmin, whereas for Whoop, it's tiny. You know, it's just playing that, playing into the, you know, consumer's behavior around pricing. And so I've probably spent more on my Whoop monthly membership than the cost of a Garmin, and I don't even wear my Whoop.

Yeah. And then you position it as a fashion, more societal item, which puts you in a group with celebrities and it's, it's a bit cheeky. It's kind of tapping into those, it's, it's designed in a, the monetization of it in a way to really hit a certain type of that aspirational market. Yeah. But probably don't have that upfront capital to buy the £1,000 Garmin. Right.

Well, it's like you're buying your latest iPhone. You obviously don't buy it. You don't just flop $1,000 on the table and take the iPhone away. You're obviously paying in tiny increments per month over 3 years, or it's your gym membership. Call it whatever you want, right? But really it's a Netflix here. It's annual recurring subscription revenue, which is why it's so valuable in terms of the valuation of their business relative to the amount of revenue they're generating. But then what's the bear case? It's like, well, look, if we come into stagflation, as we were talking about on our macro episode at the end of last week, if you're talking stagflation territory second half of this year, well then what are people going to do? They're going to start to go, well, hang on, I'm going to have a look at my bank statement. What am I spending? Well, hang on, what are all these standing orders and direct debits? And you start going down and okay, do I really need my, do I need a Netflix? Disney Plus, Amazon Prime, you know, HBO subscription. Do I need all those subscriptions? No. All right, let's like start canning some. Do I need, do I wear my Whoop? No, I don't. Ah, I'm still paying for it. Right. Cancel. You know, so if you do move into a recessionary climate, then that's where then this type of annual recurring revenue, you know, can be a little vulnerable outside of a recession. People just forget about it. You know, we're talking about wealthy nations here where that monthly subscription cost just, you forget about it. It just gets lost. You don't even realize it's happening.

Why did you stop wearing it?

Because it's a bit annoying. You've gotta charge it and it loses. So every few days you have to charge it up, right? But you can't take it off 'cause it's supposed to be on all the time tracking your data. So you attach a kind of a battery pack onto it, which is a bit unwieldy. And then I forget to charge the battery pack so that, so that's, so I can't charge it and then it's just on my arm when there's no data. And then I'm like, I don't really look at the data anyway. I know people get into this. There's this thing called VO2 max, which is one of the key data points, which is looking at how quickly your red blood cells can get oxygen around the body. Athletes look at this and there was some crazy guy, if you're into this kind of stuff, there was a Dane, I think Danish winter Olympian who does like cross-country skiing and stuff. And he does, he does, I think he does triathlons in the summer months. Anyway, he had the highest ever VO2 max score in the history of mankind. And it was in the pre— if you're into this kind of stuff, you'd be reading about it. But Look, I, I mean, I just got bored of the data and it was just tell—

oh, it was telling me it was the gap between your VO2 max and this guy, right? You were like, you were trying to—

yeah, that was the final nail. And then you were like, he's just getting away from you. For me, it was like, well, yeah, I do feel really bad this morning cuz I had a few drinks last night. I have a look at the data. Oh yeah, my data's really bad. Okay. Yeah. Or I didn't, you know, I slept really well and I feel better. Okay. Yeah. The data shows that. And it's almost like for me, it was like, I kind of know how in how I feel relative.

Yeah.

So it became a bit of a waste of time for me. Yeah.

I kind of thought, because I, uh, I agree. Sometimes I feel like psychologically you can, I often look at it, you know, having two young kids and you go, oh, my sleep score is a disaster. And you go in your head, you're like, I feel bad. So it's almost like a negative reinforcer, right? Whereas if I didn't have the watch on, I'd just crack on. And sometimes I go, oh my God, my sleep score's like 30 out of 100. Right. And you feel the 30 rather than—

very good.

It's a weird effect.

A negative reinforcer. Exactly. That's why I don't wear it.

However, I did speak to a friend of mine yesterday and he said his boss had one of these Fenix 7, like one of the top Garmin ones, and it identified an irregular heartbeat and then actually he had to have heart surgery.

Oh wow.

And it was the watch that caught it. So, oh wow.

Okay.

On that preventative side. But again, when it gets to, I think some of the depths of tracking to get to that level, that's when you have to go up the device spectrum, which is then kind of a different market, I guess. But all right, well look, we could go on, but to look at the IPO angle here then in summation, So the company Whoop is presenting itself as quite clearly a category leader and this intersection of consumer wearables, health data, AI-enabled prevention, I'm sure is how they'll position it, and healthcare infrastructure for the long play. Capital, why do they need it? Series G, as we said, deepening the product and platform, accelerate international expansion. Like you said, they've got to move out more broadly. And also demonstrate, I guess, what will be an eventual IPO in time that the business can scale both in growth and financial maturity to profitability. Yeah. As you mentioned.

Yeah. I think there's the bear case here for this. You know, you're thinking it's a very high valuation. You know, it's pretty expensive here, like $10 billion. Ultimately what is still a pretty niche and quite premium product. So that there's that, there's obviously the competition, Apple being one. Obviously Garmin and Oura, as you've mentioned, a more kind of direct competition now. But you know, who's to say Apple just doesn't come in and just smash the entire market at some point. I've mentioned that subscription fatigue thing. So if there's a recession brewing, then that ARR becomes a little vulnerable. You might say a bit of timing risk around the IPO, you know, public markets and obviously what's going on in Persian Gulf and so on. And that AI disrupting some of the kind of SaaS sector, you know, from, we've seen some share prices dropping pretty sharply. So look, there's obviously risk like there is with any investment, but Um, yeah, be interesting to see how we get on. It'd be interesting to see if, uh, the celebs, the sporting celebs can, uh, push this one over the line.

Yeah. Drop us a comment. What do you think about Whoop? Hype, or is it actually useful from a data perspective? Let us know. All right. Thanks very much, Piers, and everyone for listening, and we'll see you next time.

Have a good week.