This is what the plus, I'm justin and I'm harsh Deep and it's Friday, the twenty seventh of September.
HD Sullivan Lou, the chairman of Peter Alexander Smiggle, Just Jeans and a whole lot more retailers, has just warned that this year is the toughest it has ever been in retail He's been doing it for sixty one years. Oh wow, got to say, not the most motivating news for retailers right now.
Oh not at all.
Three cost cutting stories today, Let's get into it for our first Warner Brewers. Discovery has conferred plans if Max's streaming platform will be launching in Australia in the first half of twenty twenty five.
Another competitor for Netflix, Disney Plus and Stan and another subscription for US TV loving customers. Tell me more.
Okay, So, Warner Brothers Discovery is one of the largest global entertainment companies in the whole world.
And it became even bigger in twenty twenty two when Warner Brothers merged with Discovery, hence the name.
Yeah. Now, between the two, they dominate the movie scene with the Marvel movies.
And they dominate TV with the Discovery Channel, Cartoon Network, CNN, TNT Sports and many more.
But actually it's Water Brothers Discoveries HBO where many of their TV and movie successes come from.
Yeah, we're talking shows like The Last of Us, Euphoria and Succession, which have been some of the biggest hits over the last few years.
And while HBO launched its streaming platform Max in twenty twenty around the world, it wasn't in Australia and it was licensing that content to Foxtel.
But Jazz Foxtail's long term licensing deal with Warner Brothers and therefore HBO is up for negotiation in twenty twenty five, and rather.
Than renew it, Water Brothers has announced they're going to launch their own streaming service Max in Australia in the first half of twenty twenty five.
Stealing back all of their content from Foxtel's tight grasp like a plot twist in Succession.
So true. So what is the key learning here?
Owning your own products and your own content means controlling your own destiny, HG.
When you license shows off third party platform, you're at the mercy of their decisions.
Disney did this when they launched Disney Plus and they yanked all of this shows from Netflix now Jazz. To be fair, Foxtel does produce a tiny, tiny fraction of its own content.
Yeah. In twenty twenty two it announced plans to produce eight shows locally, like the courtroom drama The Twelve, which I got to say, I've never heard of.
Neither, And this year it's announced plans to co produce shows from Fox Entertainment.
But by licensing the majority of its content, Foxtale has risks being left.
Behind because jazz. While creating your own content has enormous costs, it also means you don't need to face these types of content battles.
And given there are fifteen paid streaming plays in Australia already, oh wow, Foxtel and its streaming platform Binge, I're going to find it increasingly difficult to differentiate itself. Before we jump into our second story, we're very excited to have Michael McCarthy, the chief commercial officer from MOVIU Australia, to give us another market update for this week. Michael, welcome to the pod.
Thank you very much. It's great to be hearing it, so.
Talk to us. Apart from the AFL Grand Final this weekend. What have you got for us this week?
Well, lots song. Once again central banks at the center of the market action.
Because after hearing from the US Federal Reserve last week and they're the cutting of rates, We've heard from a lot of others. We've heard from the Bank of England, We've heard from the Bank of Japan, we've heard from the Reserve Bank of Australia. And what's really interesting is something that we haven't seen for fifteen years is starting
to break out. That is, instead of responding to the global impulses and ways that we're driving markets and economies and all acting together, central banks are now focusing on their own countries and their own stories, and that means we can see situations where, for example, in Japan and Australia, interstrates are going up, while in the US and Europe they're going down. And that's something we haven't seen since before the Great Financial Crisis is two and eighty two thousand.
For many investors and traders, this is the first time they'll see central banks acting independently. And one of the things the traders are talking about this for me, is that we'll see an increase in volatility. Now, volatility can be a scary word, but let's remember risk and reward related. So when volatility increases, we certainly had greater downside risk
and investors should be aware of that. But there's also potential folks shares to really shoot higher, higher than we would otherwise expect, and investors and trailers should be taking that into account.
For our second story, Google Australia is about to roll out the most significant change to its search engine in over a decade because it's welcoming in AI.
Google have been panicking about this one ever since they've potched announcement last year. I remember that it was a disast, so tell me what.
So for decades, Google has dominated the search engine market with more than eighty percent market share.
They've become the go to source for pretty much any piece of information.
But when the hot, shiny new toy of chat Gibt came onto the scene in November twenty twenty two, Google raise a red alert.
Yeah, it was the first real threat to Google search dominance in over a decade.
So now Google has announced that it's a new feature called AI Overviews will launch in Australia over the coming days.
So how does this overviews feature work?
Well, let's say you search, how do I make sure my spaghetti is al dente?
Okay, go on before the.
Hyperlinks to other pages that you're used to, Google will give you a short AI generated summary and then.
The traditional search results will be further down the page.
Yeah. Google has already rolled out the AI overviews in the US, UK, India, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico and Brazil.
And over the coming days a small percentage of Australians will also receive the feature too.
All part of their plan to keep Google Search relevant in the new AI age.
Yeah, so what is the key learning here?
Companies need to protect the golden goose at all costs.
Yeah, Google search is very clearly Google's cash can get this. Google generated more than one hundred and seventy five billion US dollars for its search products in twenty twenty three alone.
That's more than five times what it made from YouTube.
So clearly this revenue stream must be protected at all costs ahead of anything else.
But Google needs to strike a very careful balancing act.
Yeah. On the one hand, it needs to ensure their products are cutting edge and competing with the best.
On the other hand, it needs to ensure that it's delivering reliable search results.
Yeah, but we know the risky AI is that it kind of has a tendency to hallucinate in a really authoritative way.
Yeah. When AI overviews rolled out in the US, it recommended that people eat at least one small rock per day.
It also suggested that you should add non toxic glue to pizza. Yet the cheese. I remember the pizza basse.
So let's hope Google's AI doesn't confuse innovation with insanity.
Oh, we'll all be eating rocks and glue pizzas for dinner. Suits.
For our third and final story, Meta has debuted augmented reality glasses called Orion with holographic displays.
Very Tony Stark vides I'm getting from this one. So what is the STORYHG. Well Z.
We know Meta for its collection of social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and threads.
Honestly completely forgot the threads are still around.
Don't blame you, but jazz. Over the last couple of years, Meta has been going hard on developing the metaverse.
Also known as where the digital and physical worlds come together, also known as Zack's little platefi.
Now we know that Meta's Reality Labs unit, which houses the Metaverse development, has made forty five billion US dollars in losses since twenty twenty five.
The Meta is hoping to turn the Metaverse's fate around with its latest release.
Yeah, Meta has unveiled a prototype for its new augmented reality glasses called the Orion.
It's got holographic displays and also the glasses can overlate two D and three D content.
And of course there's AI that proactively offers suggestions to the wearer.
It wouldn't be a new product. They didn't drop the word AI, and.
It would it So right now, Orion is still a prototype, but partman, part bot. Zuckerberg is hoping to release it to the public by twenty twenty seven.
And actually, word on the Silicon Valley Street is that Zuckerberg's mildly concerning obsession with the Metaverse may finally pay off.
So what's the key learning here?
Sometimes companies persist with new technology despite a lot of signs that it won't work out, you see jazz.
Many tech leaders have been trying to make smart glasses popular for a long time.
Like back in twenty thirteen when Google came out with Google Glass, which cripped people way too much should be come upular.
But despite that, companies like Meta and Snap have been investing in smart glasses for a while now.
Because there's still betting that these smart glasses will place smartphones in the future.
And all this persistence might actually be leading Meta somewhere.
Talk me through this.
Get this. Meta's newest generation of smart classes with RayBan have sold more in a few months than the older generations did over two years.
Wow. Kind of reminds me a bit of Apple when it first dabbled in personal devices with the Apple Newton back in nineteen ninety three.
It was a huge failure, but Apple kept persisting and seventeen years later introduced the iPad in twenty ten and the rest was history.
So who knows that she there might actually be a future where we're lighting out for the newest model of smart glasses and not smartphones. We loved having Michael McCarthy for a Moving Australia on the Pod again today and AHG before he left, I loved your question asking his crystal ball predictions for the upcoming RBA decisions.
Michael, do you have any predictions for what the RBA is going to do at its next meeting.
I think this is one of the most fascinating aspects in the market at the moment because the RBA has said that inflation won't be coming down sustainably until twenty twenty six. Now there's a straight lead to that, no rate cuts for all the trial months in Australia and possibly rate riss. The market is saying that, and they are pricing a rate cut by February. This is extrawdy. Somebody's going to be wrong here, and if it's the market, the adjustment here could be very sharp and very quick.
So I'm very careful about doubting their view. But it appears on a loan in the market at the last everybody else is prepared to back themselves against a reserve bank, and I think that's a very gutsy call.
Michael, thanks so much for joining us in the pod once again, a wealth of information and looking forward to trading some of these stocks on MOOS platform.
Outstanding.
Thanks so much, Michael, plucks BAM. We hope you enjoyed our interview with Michael McCarthy. Hit us up at flux dot Finance. On Instagram and TikTok If there are any other experts that you'd like us to chat
To, Thanks for listening and we'll see you on Monday.