Wall Street Business Flywheel Strategy

Ozempic just broke Pepsi’s whole model

Hans Albrecht

Dear Income traders,

Something just changed. And most people missed it.

We're entering a world where anyone can start a business in an afternoon. AI writes the code. AI builds the site.

AI runs the back office. The cost of starting something just collapsed to almost nothing.

Look at this chart from Torsten Sløk:

New business applications haven't just recovered. They've gone vertical. Millions of new companies a year.

And every single one of them wakes up with the same problem: they need customers.

So where do they go?

They go to Meta Platforms (META). Facebook. Instagram. WhatsApp.

The one place on earth where a brand new business can put its product in front of the exact person who wants it.

And here's the part Wall Street still doesn't fully understand. Meta isn't just renting the ad space anymore. They're handing every new business an AI that builds the ad for them.

Type one sentence. Get back a finished campaign. The image, the copy, the targeting, all of it.

They're going to be printing ads like the Fed prints money.

More businesses. More advertisers. The cost to make an ad drops to zero.

The demand for the space goes through the roof. That's not a product. That's a flywheel.

And it spins faster every quarter.

That's why Meta is my one to love. I think it's a one-trick pony, but it's an awfully good trick in the AI age.

One to Leave: Pepsi Just Lost Its Best Customer to Ozempic

Now the other side of the trade.

PepsiCo (PEP) sells sugar water and salty snacks. For 50 years that was a beautiful business.

People couldn't stop eating. I couldn't stop drinking. The cravings did the selling for them.

Then came the GLP-1 drugs.

Ozempic. Wegovy. Zepbound.

And they're not fading out. They're coming back stronger than ever.

These drugs do one thing extremely well. They turn the cravings off. The exact cravings Pepsi spent a century building its empire on.

You can almost hear it in the boardroom. The sugar water executives aren't happy about this. They're watching their best customer finally learn how to say no.

And besides, let's be honest.

Coke is better.

That's my one to leave.

Want to see which names I'm circling next? I'm breaking it all down on the Ticker Highlight Show, Monday at 10:30 AM ET.