The Ostrich Report AKA: The Marketplace Podcast Week 6 - JD.com Buys Into Germany… What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Welcome to the next episode of The Ostrich Report. I am your co-host Vinny O Brien, talking to you all the way from sunny Ireland. Not often get to say that. And with me, as always, celebrating winter, is my good friend Hendrik Leubscher down in Cape Town. Hendrik, how the hell are you?

Really? We are— I'm celebrating the winter? Dude, you do not know me well enough. I hate the winter. Almost finished, but yeah, how can I celebrate the winter? And you, sunny in Ireland. What's happening in the world?

We're having our Indian summer in early August. It's amazing. We're in the midst of another heat wave, which is I think our third one this year, which, wow, you know, if you don't believe in climate change, I say screw you. But it's been good. Look how tanned I look. I can wear a yellow t-shirt and not look like a complete clown. Don't blend in with my background too much, which is plus. Big question for you though, what do you snack on during the day? What's your snack regime? I can never figure out what to eat properly. Are you like a grazer, or do you do like 2, 3 big things during the day? Because I'm getting— that's why.

So for me at the moment, uh, I'm on fresh fruit. So as I said, the winter— so down here in South Africa we have um, blood oranges, which I love. It's called Cara Cara. Um, it's, it's a variant of an orange that is, I think, just been bastardized. And, um, I do 2 of them in the afternoon. Um, then mid-afternoon I do a cup of tea. Yes, I'm old school and sad. Um, and then, uh, later on, um, in the evening it's dinner. Which could be anything. So yes, that's, that's my snack regime. Yours? What do you do?

Oh, so unhealthy. During the summer, I kind of go off the rails. I eat meat for breakfast and not enough fruit. I will have vegetables and bread during my lunch, and then dinner is whatever, whatever we kind of feel like, because we kind of snack in the evenings and pickle up with kids, and it's kind of good to graze. It's hard to get them back into the house in the evening, so I kind of find that dinner is this scattered affair where you'd love that romantic, let's all sit down and have dinner together and, you know, say a prayer and be thankful and all that good stuff. But it's, it's almost like survival of the fittest. There's this amazing story about a British politician once who said he came from a big family, but it gave him this fighter's instinct, which I thought was really, really cool. He said he's one of 12 children, but for every meal that was prepared, once the kids were old enough, the parents only prepared 11 meals out of 12. So it meant if you were the last one in, you didn't get fed for that particular mealtime. And it gave him this really good fighter spirit, which I thought was interesting. And I was just scripting another podcast before this, and it was about nature versus nurture. And that's why I wanted to ask you that meal idea, because that's what came to my head as I was writing the script. What a Monday morning, huh? Where do you even go about it?

The marketplace of foods. Vinny O Brien's body. That's, that's what I was thinking.

This is our big marketplace emporium starting with food. But the marketplace world is in quite a lot of flux right now. It's benefiting in a lot of ways from aggregation. We see people now starting to step up and become marketplaces. We see marketplaces that are not marketplaces. Talking about Shopify, of course, have had amazing earning results last week. Amazon have posted really good results. What it said to me, Endrick, and we'll talk about a few more, we're going to cover them next week actually. It's that marketplaces have this amazing ability to earn revenue from sources that goes beyond the transaction. Hello. So that is why they become so investible, uh, so important. But what's your assessment overall if you look at the marketplace landscape across the world? Can you give me like a 2-minute rundown of how you think they're performing? Are they up and down where you thought they'd be at this stage of the year?

So it's interesting you asked me this. Um, I've been thinking over the last couple of weeks about all the various marketplaces in the world and where they are in terms of, of the, the maturation. And so in the developing economies, you have Jumia that can't make profit whatsoever, then One step up from them, you have MercadoLibre, which I believe is the most interesting marketplace at the moment because of how they've moved fintech into their business. Then you have, um, Coupang, which is in South Korea, which is essentially a supply chain monster that basically has the most supply chain per square meters in the world. Which is also making a ton of money. Um, but in most cases, to your point, um, marketplaces are winning because they have scale. But I think more importantly, they deliver in the sense that when you buy something from a marketplace, you know that in 48 hours you will get the item that you want. I think also the other thing is, is that you can't compare marketplaces to one another because there's nuances, okay? And every nuance is different because of the country in which they operate. But I think more importantly that you have— I firmly believe you have marketplaces all over the world continuing to win because they have the best selection. But I think now with all the tariffs that consumers are increasingly going to look for lower-priced goods to make their budgets and the just the day-to-day living more livable. And I think, you know, you want a marketplace because you can have a selection that you can't find on brands. Uh, so can I, can I just take up that point?

Because I spoke with someone about it last week, and it's something we forget about in our trading cycles is the product life cycle. So where's our product in terms of its maturation? Um, I love that word that you said a few minutes ago, so I just wanted to use it. I was trying to figure out how do I work it in. Um, but we don't always think about our product in terms of it, you know, it's— is it a, is it a seasonal product? Is it a seasonal brand? Where are we on our kind of lifecycle in terms of pricing? So do we want to get more margin for a longer period of time? And if so, are marketplaces the right place for us? And it comes from an old slide that we used to have at eBay, and it shows that lifecycle really well from brand new in season to terminal and where all that sits. Now, what that does is if you're a brand or a retailer, it shows you there's opportunity at all stages of that lifecycle to utilize marketplaces. Places to do something with it. And one great example that I remember really well at the terminal stage was when we worked at Argos in the UK when I was at eBay. And we thought they were doing really well. They got to about 18, 20 million turnover in kind of like our 18th month of working with them. And we thought this is a great news story. We get into the board meeting and they said, no, this is awful. It just means our buyers are buying really badly and we have to write this stuff off balance sheet. Every 3 months so that it can go and sit on eBay. And then we've got 21 days to recover 65% of the original cash value of that product back into the business, or else we write it off fully and it's— it goes beyond terminal. Which, you know, that, that one curve, that one bell curve, showed us that there's money to be made everywhere if we're prepared to do the digging. Now, question for you, because I want to get into the meat of this. I want to— we want to talk a little bit about JD.com and some of the moves that they're making. And I know this is something you spend a lot of time researching, but is TikTok Shop a marketplace? Entertainment platform TikTok.

So TikTok is a marketplace, but they're not a— they're a— they're not a double-sided marketplace in the sense that they don't own their supply chain. So they have arguably the best technology with finding audiences and converting audiences, but after the purchase, they're dependent on third parties. And for me, that's where trouble starts. But also, um, to your point earlier, I think we also have to talk about new marketplaces such as Temu, Shein, and others where that product lifecycle actually is now on the platform, except it's not— it's no longer a brand, a brand that has the lifecycle. It's actually the platform that controls the lifecycle. And that for me is one of the things that I think people misunderstand. But yes, to answer your question, TikTok is a marketplace, but it's not a traditional marketplace.

Got it. I, I— we, we'll come back because we want to investigate some of these marketplaces as we go on. You've also mentioned Temu and Shein. They have without doubt changed the way we think about marketplaces as well. But today on the Ostrich Report, we want to unpack one of the biggest deals of the year and maybe one of the biggest gambles that we have seen in quite some time. JD.com, Chinese e-commerce giant, has just dropped €2.5 billion to buy Germany's e-conomy, the company that was behind Media Markt, Saturn. They have over 1,000 stores across Europe. And on paper, it's kind of like a neat marriage of East and West. Philosophies when it comes to marketplace and retail, um, and, and also supply chain, you know, getting together with consumer electronics retail and, and combining those forces. But does it actually make sense is really what I want to try and explore with you a little bit. And I kind of premise it by asking you a question: is this kind of like strategic genius in your opinion, or is it what Harvard Business School is going to be looking at in a few years and doing a case study on? Overreach.

So let's first get the elephant out of the room. This story is a nomination for the largest retail acquisition M&A, um, of the year in Europe. Let's just get that out the way, number one.

Number two, there'll be no one beats that. Let's, let's call a spade a spade. No one's going to go bigger than that this year. Yeah, there's no one in Europe that they're gonna We've got that out the way and we agree, which is also amazing.

Um, I— you asked me a question that I could almost say like, how long is a piece of string here? JD is very clearly believing that this year is the year in which they must do a thousand things. And I would— for me, the best analogy that I'm thinking with at the moment with regards to them is it feels like one of your children walking through the house with a plate of spaghetti and deciding that they're gonna throw the plate of spaghetti against the wall and hope that it sticks. Mom, I've actually seen that in my own life, which is hilarious, but it's a nightmare to clean. But I think we also have to mention that sasonomi isn't the best marketplace in Germany. They've been unseated with— by, you know, who else— by Amazon Germany. But I think, I think this is a bet by China and JD.com in itself to say we want to grow our supply chain in Europe without actually having to build the infrastructure.

So two follow-on questions then. Is this a defensive or offensive tactic? I mean, you've mentioned some competitors of theirs early on. Um, is it defensive or offensive? My first question to you.

So I think this is offensive. Um, why? Because one, this mitigates them from being dependent on markets that have excessive tariffs. Um, hello Shein and Temu. But also, for me, it grows a supply chain. I continue to go back one thing with JD.com, Vinny, and I think this is important. If you think about JD.com, JD was an online retailer first, and then they grew their supply chain to the point where They can get anything into China in like 2 days. They have, they have the supply chain chops that, that we in the West believe Amazon has. Yeah, but the challenge with that business model is that it's capital intensive. It doesn't scale unless you invest significantly.

Here's what you're going to be a detractor to, Timo Chen, right?

So Yes.

How, with your knowledge of this, maybe you can break it down a little bit for, for people who are listening. But JD.com, previously they've had a very China-centric approach, right? They, they've built for in-country. This is, this is such a bold move for them. Can you, can you maybe just clarify for us how, how big a deal that, that this is and, and how unusual a behavior it is for them? And also to be bringing in the, the offline network, which is not to be forgotten here. Like, you, you talk about supply chain, um, I want to come back to that point in a second because it's, it's giving them a footprint maybe, um, beyond what their current capability is. But let's, let's try and break that down for people. So can, can you tell us about the previous approaches that JD.com used to take?

So JD.com has done a variety of strategies. So to your point, They have been very China-specific, and with that they've seen themselves losing significant market share in China to new platforms such as Pinduoduo, um, and the newer e-commerce platforms that are doing stuff that, that isn't— that has new business models. So about 6 years ago, it could be more, it could be less, They partnered with retailers, um, in Indonesia, and I think it was Taiwan, to grow retail businesses in these markets. And 18 months later, they shut it down because they didn't have control over it, but also it didn't scale because these are nascent markets, um. Whereas with this current deal with Sesame, you are going into a market that is arguably one of the most developed retail and e-commerce markets in the world, that which is very similar to what JD does in, um, China. I think the one other thing that I'd like to mention here, and I think this is a general problem that doesn't get spoken about enough of is that these Chinese platforms have a problem, and that is that consumers continue to believe that they're a Chinese platform. I know that sounds completely mad, but the fact that they are Chinese does not help them in perception about the quality of products that they sell, but as well as you know, the effects that they could have on the planet, etc., etc. That's a big deal. And I'm seeing, especially in German media, people are saying that this is going to harm German retail, this is bad for the world, blah blah blah blah blah blah. The challenge is, and, and it's important to note, in the last 5 years JD.com has gone nowhere.

They—

founder Richard Liu moved from founder to chairperson. They announced, or they have had, two different CEOs. They have not gone anywhere. Think about 5 years in terms of Chinese, um, e-commerce. What's happened in the last 5 years? We've seen new business models where, uh, TikTok Shop uh, Temu and Shein have essentially become cross-border marketplaces, have that, have access to the entire world. JD didn't do that because they believe that it's a business model that doesn't scale, which I don't necessarily agree with. And they also believe that with all the political headwinds, this, this cross-border thing is going to go nowhere. I have a newsletter.

Let me just pick that up for a sec. Well, I, and I don't mean to cut across— well, I do, I mean to cut across you, wholeheartedly mean it. Um, there's a couple of things there. If you take it in that context, the move could be seen as defensive rather than offensive, blocking potential partnerships for, for Temu and Shein, who have, who have both done steps to legitimize themselves differently. Temu were working hard on the ground gathering sellers who are part of an economic ecosystem now that, that is part of GDP really, and they're picking up on that side. But SHEIN, uh, I've gone a different way. They've gone to IPO, and we know that that didn't work out the way they wanted, but they are trying to legitimize themselves now. To the, the recent cases against SHEIN, just as kind of an example, to me it was like they were targeted. There's, there's no— there's very few retailers or brands at the minute who have not manufactured in China for a long time, quality has never been really an issue. We're all held up to ISO standards. Consumers know this for quite some time. And the purchasing that we've done on Temu right across Europe over the last 2, 3 years has been phenomenal. So I think the trust, the, the antitrust movement is coming from somewhere that is not a consumer-facing problem. I don't believe anyway. I, I don't know any friend that has said or anyone I know that's bought off Temu and said, I don't think the quality is as good as I can get elsewhere. What they have said is, I'm getting value for the price that I'm paying, which is a very different message. And it's really aligned to what they want out there. This kind of the follow-on from that is you've got this other cultural makeup, like Germany, just for people who don't know, and I don't profess to be an expert, but But certainly in my dealings over there, there's still a lot of family-owned businesses in Germany, particularly at the retail level and a brand level under third, fourth, second generation businesses. And they're not under public pressure. They're looking for ways to expand their capabilities. And they have spent and invested a lot privately to get to where they are and have been quite reluctant to bring in too much external influence. But Germany is a marketplace economy. Like you look at the ones that do well there, Amazon and eBay are two dominant marketplaces. You've got Brands for Friends, Friends for Brands, there's Trends and Brands, there's loads and loads of them that do well. Otto have become this amazingly successful business as well. But you take all that in context and you're wondering why does Price? I mean, I know they've got a big physical infrastructure and how will JD adopt or adapt to having now this physical presence that they have got to manage as well? So you've got these 2 clashes of culture immediately, and, and that, that in itself stifles growth because we're trying to figure out first, then there's this systems adaptation side of things. All logic would say they're going to embed their systems and ways of working into Germany as opposed to the other way around, and that's going to be met with resistance. You've got the Union, which are quite strong in Germany as well, and we, we forget, we forget just how powerful that they are. Uh, so workers' rights are, are going to be front and center. Is it another online business that's trying to legitimize just through a different means? And final part of all this, because it's not really a question, it's more of a statement, it tells you they're not going to go away anytime soon. And I look at this, the, the tariffs have created a lot of indirect discussions all around the world and in different ways. Countries and companies are going to have to figure out ways to do business without solely relying on the US as a core market right now. Because like it or not, there's an inherent lack of trust now. Like, you know, what, what works today doesn't necessarily work tomorrow. And I think it's okay to say that now. People have got to find their own path forward and say, on our risk register, USA as a market could be taken off us tomorrow, so we need to de-risk that a little bit for ourselves. Is this the first kind of secondary look at someone taking a, taking a punt on something to say we, we need to evolve new markets. Like Europe, 370 million people. US, 360 million, or give or take 10 million. The way that you trade, let's go for a big market, right?

I think so. I, I think the one thing that I need to add here is that what makes this very interesting for me is that JD has trial service, a service in the Netherlands, uh, Otrana, which they last week renamed to JD, to Joybuy, which operates also in, in, in the UK, which essentially gives consumers, um, like it's almost same-day delivery. So, so that's a big deal. Um, but I think that to your point about secondary impact, think about what you've just said. By buying, uh, Sesame, you get access to a variety of European markets which Media Markt and Saturn already exist in. So you don't have to do anything new there. I was just looking while you were talking, I just quickly looked at, um, JD's, you know, just their financial scale. They generated 40— over $40 billion worth of revenue in quarter 1 of this year. With that, out of that $40 billion, $1.5 billion of that was profit. The reason why I mentioned this is that JD's scale— this isn't a financial risk for them. Think about what I've just said. This isn't a financial risk for them because of their scale. So who, who is at risk here? This is Sesame, which is at risk with all their employees and all of these stores And as I said, and I think what also needs to be said here is that it would be interesting to see with how regulators allow this acquisition to close. Are they going to be, um, uh, considerations to say that for a period of 3 years there cannot be, um, you know, closures of stores, there cannot be retrenchments, there cannot be a variety of things? I tend to think that's going to be the case. Um, but I come back to a simple point. JD has gone back to their roots. Their roots is being a supply chain company first and then a retailer. And I switched to earlier, but this is in, in the current 2025 landscape. They have said that we want to power the logistics to ensure that consumers can have convenience wherever we operate. Sisonomi, for me, I think is them basically saying, where can we go without too much risk and basically redo our playbook? The question that needs to be asked here, Vinny, and I think this is a big question, is in 5 years' time, in 2030, what is going to be the story? Is this going to be a story of in 5 years that Sisonomi now generates 3, 4, 5, 10, 15 billion euros in annual revenues for JD? Or is this going to be a tale of in 5 years that we will see that, uh, JD sold Sisonomi to some private equity business in Europe because they couldn't get this to work. So, so can I just finish? Yeah. The clash of cultures between Chinese and non-Chinese is a very big challenge in any sector. In the retail and e-commerce, it's huge.

So I want to pull out my crystal ball a little bit and do a bit of stargazing. You asked a 2030 question and I think they will run into regulatory problems. I, I don't see this something being something that will just sail through. So, and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that part out. But Europe being Europe, um, I think what will be telling is the depth to which they're asked to go and justify this and, and, and to grovel. If it's a reasonable— if it's reasonably soft, um, intervention that we've made against them, it tells us that maybe there's favorability to a deal like this because trade agreements are changing slightly, and there might be a softening of, of thinking there. There's one other part to this that it's only as you talk that I started thinking about, and Walmart bought Vizio, much to everyone's laughter, a couple years ago. But, but what's, what is becoming abundantly clear in retail media is the physical or hardware side of it is as important as the software side. And, and I look at something like this, and with the supply chain cloud that someone like JD has, is there somewhere in, in my mind, is there a possibility that this is actually to embed a full-on supply chain of hardware products, TVs, connected devices, whatever we care to think about in the electronics category? That ultimately will become places that retailers and brands can sell additional media space and become more outlets within a network that becomes very lucrative and very profitable for someone like JD.com. And then it's, you know, then it really is a long-term game. They're in it for 15, 20 years, if you ask me. Do you see any sense in what I'm saying, or am I complete tinfoil hat territory?

No, no, you're right, and I, I had the same thought, so I did some research. I can find no evidence of JD offering merchants advertising in a similar manner to what, um, Walmart and Amazon does. Obviously, I don't read Mandarin well, so, you know, maybe I missed it. I think the one other interesting thing also to mention is is that the, the owners, the family that owns Sesame, are not divesting their stake. They are continuing to hold more than 20%, um, stake of the business. What's very interesting to me, and to your point about regulation, if you look at the, the press releases announcing this deal, it mentions a a public takeover and an investment by JD into Sesame. It's not a— this is an acquisition, you know, the normal— we have— we are announcing that we've acquired this business subject to terms closing. No, no. And for me, that tells me that this whole transaction has been very thought out about how do we minimize the, the potential for regulation to harm this deal. That said, I will reiterate, in German media, which I read daily, there's major concern about this deal and the impact it could have on German retail. Um, I just need to make mention here that MediaSat Media Markt and Saturn are essentially the largest electronics retailers in Germany and to a degree in Europe. So this has huge implications. For me, the question remains, yes, this is going to be essentially like a subsidiary that's managed independently from Beijing and JD.com. But this has to be some, some version of give and take, because as you mentioned right at the start, no one's spending $2.5 billion to buy a retailer and online seller just to say that, you know, everything is going to be fine and dandy. There has to be things that are not in the public domain yet. So to answer your question that you asked me right at the beginning, this is an offensive move by JD to grow their market share in Europe. I firmly believe that it's a defensive move for Sesame because, let's be honest, the business was, I believe, in firm need of investment. They were starting to lose significant share to, um, Amazon Germany.

Yeah.

And more importantly, and I think this is an important caveat, is that JD's history of international businesses does not give me pause for thought in the sense that I cannot tell you, unlike your Vizio being acquired by Walmart story, Yeah, which, yes, people laughed at it, but people still respected the fact that Walmart spent the money. Nobody knows what the outcome of this, this acquisition is. I've looked at multiple friends and sources in, in China and in Germany, and nobody really knows what the future—

so just a couple of A couple of things to pick up on there, because as you were talking, I looked up what some of the, the media was saying in Germany there to try and get a sense of what they're saying on the ground. And I understand that there'll be PR spin, there'll be all these things we hear always about, you know, security concerns around, you know, IT systems and so on and so forth. So I think there will be, um, like a force separation, which is confirmed here in terms of IT systems and ways of operating initially. But I can see that being eroded. That's something we should continue to look at over time, is how much integration there is across the business. But I'm going to read from the site online. Um, the, the, um, Chinese Unternehmen JD.com soll, uh, Sesamie bei der Digitalisierung unterstützen. Uh, die IT-Systeme beider Unternehmen sollen dabei jedoch strikt getrennt bleiben. Uh, the entry of Chinese company JD.com is intended to support Sesamie and its digitization. The IT systems of both, however, are to remain strictly separated. I'm going to read just one more for you. It goes to the point you made about investment. I won't do the German version, just to peacock a little bit.

Please don't, because I was just thinking, wait, what did I miss here? Vinny understands German.

I studied German for 12 years. I learned how to speak the language. So I just— reading it and talking is not something I've been good at for a while. But the quote here from Channel Partner, it goes back to that investment point that you made. We don't just want to accompany the transformation in European retail in the coming years, we want to lead it further. JD.com is the right partner for that, says Sisonimi CEO Kai-Ulrich Deisner. And I think that's telling. And there's also a couple of things there about workers' rights being respected and digital momentum, etc., etc. So it's all very forward-looking. And the right notes are being struck when it comes to technology and employee rights and so on. So there has to be upside for JD.com beyond providing a digital infrastructure. And I think the key to that is in the hardware side of it. So kind of looking at the clock here as well, Hendrik, and I want to try and bring this to a close. Over the next few weeks, we want to talk about some of the other big marketplaces and the earnings performance that we have seen over the last while. So MercadoLibre is going to be first on our stop list, but to try and bring this together and close it off. Um, if this fails for JD, is there a plan B? Like, there's no European retailer to pivot towards, uh, due to do fulfillment only, or do they have options as you see it? Or do you think there's too much runway here for them to have to worry about a plan B for now?

I go back to what I said in this conversation. JD does not have a history of winning outside of China. They will not have a plan B because they will— this, this needs to win. Richard Liu has made it known that this needs to win. Okay, I just want to say this quickly. I believe that all Western investors and My question remains, and I go back to what I asked before, in 2023, what does the— when we look back on this conversation, do we look this on— this was the start of a, of a, a situation where others do similar things? I don't see Alibaba buying retailers that are actually selling those, though, the retailers, or, or lessening the financial stake in retailers in China. Um, I don't see Temu or Shein buying retailers, so this has to work for JD. For me, the question goes with all of the, the, the standalone nature of this transaction: what can JD really do to scale Sesame? Is that give them access to more Chinese electronics? Is that give them access to the fulfillment the end-to-end fulfillment network. I'm just trying to understand the mechanics of what success could look like. And honestly, having read wide, I don't think anybody knows except those who work for JD and for those who work in Sasonomy. But yeah, this is— this, this remains for me a nominee of one of the most unclear future transactions of 2025 for me, Vinny. I have no idea what the in-game year is.

So maybe there's going to be a little, a little signal for us of what they could be looking at around cross-border trade in, in the Shopify earnings results. For 8 quarters before this last earnings report last week, Shopify had reported growth in Europe of between 33% and 35%. Earlier this year, they gave a commitment to the SI community and to their community at large to say, we're going to put some more boots on the ground to support all of this. And they've started that process during the quarter. I thought it was interesting to note that they said they've achieved 49% growth year on year in Q2 this year. That, that's an acceleration of nearly 15% where they didn't have it for, um, nearly 8 whole quarters. So it's a little over 2 years. And I thought that was telling. I've always said that there's money on the table in Europe, and if you can figure out how to get it, that there's growth to be had. So maybe JD.com recognized something in there as well, and Sasonomy recognized the limitation in their own capabilities. I'm just speculating. You're shrugging your shoulders like, this guy is drunk and it's Monday, it's only 1 o'clock, uh, he's usually talking like this at Friday at 5 o'clock. But who knows? As we said, this is just such an interesting deal, we thought it was worth giving a show over to it. Something we're going to follow. We're going to keep coming back to you guys, telling you a little bit more about it. But next week we're going to be talking about Mercado Libre, as Hendrik mentioned. And we're going to start bringing some guests through the show as well to bring a little bit more color and expertise and in-market knowledge to the shows over the coming weeks and months as well. And we have some incredible international speakers that are going to join us. We got confirmation of some of them over the weekend. And look, it's hugely exciting to be able to get access to these kind of people. Don't you think, Hendrik?

It is, but I think what's more interesting for me is that the kind of guest that we will talk to are— these are actual operators. Yeah, that are actually in, in, in the details and not a lot of— not folks like me who are dependent on news to make their opinions about it. But yes, exciting times, and I'm looking forward to our conversation on MercadoLibre. As well of Vinny.

Yeah, look, you, you know this, you know that marketplace so well. Um, I'm really keen to, to kind of learn from you as well. So really excited about it. So for now, go enjoy your blood orange. My kids had a blood orange San Pellegrino yesterday. I was mortified when my 7-year-old said in a shop, can I get a San Pellegrino? Uh, we, we say, we say here he's got notions about himself. So I'm gonna have to, gonna have to make sure that those those hard edges get knocked off them.

Lord help us. San Pellegrino on our con was in our podcast and they're not even a podcast sponsor. Sponsor us, please.

Yes, San Pellegrino, we love your drink. Cheers.

We do.

Have a great afternoon, my friend.

Thanks. Talk to you again.

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