Metsera Tumbles After Novo Pulls Out of Bidding War With Pfizer

Summary

Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast — Episode Summary

Episode: Metsera Tumbles After Novo Pulls Out of Bidding War With Pfizer
Date: November 10, 2025
Hosts: Paul Sweeney, Scarlet Fu (Bloomberg Intelligence)
Featured Analysts: Sam Frazelli, Mandeep Singh, Jennifer Bartashus

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Episode Overview

The episode dives deep into significant company developments and market dynamics, centered on:

• The collapse of Novo Nordisk’s bid for Metsera, a US maker of an experimental weight-loss drug, yielding victory to Pfizer.
• Broader implications for the competitive landscape in obesity drugs, the pharmaceutical sector, and how incumbents like Eli Lilly are positioned.
• Analysis of semiconductor giant TSMC in light of recent growth figures and its role as the backbone of the AI chip supply chain.
• A check-in on Tyson Foods’ earnings and the structural drivers of high beef prices in America, topped by thoughts on poultry pricing for the holiday season.

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1. Metsera Bidding War: Novo Nordisk vs. Pfizer

[01:55 - 07:36]

Key Points & Insights

• Metsera’s Weight Loss Drug Attracts Bidders

  • Both Novo Nordisk and Pfizer vied for Metsera, which specializes in an experimental weight-loss (GLP-1) drug.
  • Fierce interest reflects the sector’s search for new obesity solutions.

• Clinical Strengths and Questions

  • Sam Frazelli noted that Metsera had recently clarified data on its once-monthly GLP-1 candidate, with side effects on par with similar drugs: common nausea and vomiting early in treatment, resolving over time ([02:37]).
  • “If you can withstand them, you seem to get the benefit and it seems to work pretty well as a once monthly drug. But there's always more wood to be chopped.” — Sam Frazelli [02:50]

• Regulatory Risks Led Novo Nordisk to Withdraw

  • Novo Nordisk’s deal faced antitrust risks; the FTC warned Metsera that approval might be blocked, tipping advantage to Pfizer ([03:40]).
  • “It sounds like the FTC had given Metsehra a call saying, look, if you go with [Novo] there is a risk it won't close, so do whatever you think is the right thing for your shareholders.” — Sam Frazelli [03:48]

• Market Implications for Novo Nordisk & Eli Lilly

  • Despite “losing” the bidding war, Novo isn’t out—though its pursuit indicates a need to bolster its obesity asset pipeline ([04:15]).
  • “I wouldn't call them desperate, but they obviously by going after this they did say that we need more assets in our bank.” — Sam Frazelli [04:18]
  • The market is currently favoring Eli Lilly, whose drugs are showing stronger performance; Lilly was notably absent from the bidding war ([04:40]).

• Industry Dynamics: ‘Haves and Have-Nots’

  • Pharma stocks are increasingly bifurcated: strong obesity exposure means share price gains; others lag ([05:12]).
  • Neuroscience and cardiovascular fields are seeing more pharma investment, showing the sector is broadening beyond just obesity ([05:38]).

• Eli Lilly’s Position

  • “I think Eli Lilly is currently very well placed with the assets that they have today to compete. And they're showing that they're competing very, very effectively and in some cases winning market share from Novo Nordisk.” — Sam Frazelli [06:42]

• Closing Thought: US Medical Funding

  • Sam expressed concern over President Trump’s threats to cut medical and STEM research funding, seeing such moves as damaging to US economic and scientific leadership ([07:11]).

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2. Semiconductor Deep Dive: TSMC & the AI Gold Rush

[10:37 - 18:14]

Key Points & Insights

• TSMC: AI Growth, Capacity Constraints & Diversification

  • Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) reported slower monthly sales growth (16.9%, slowest in 18 months) but remains on track ([12:51]).
  • AI now makes up ~15% of TSMC’s revenues; demand is strong, especially for cutting-edge “leading nodes,” where TSMC is unrivaled ([13:13]).
  • “Everyone is putting their dollars in AI capex, but then they have to take away spending from elsewhere. And so the non AI piece of the hardware spend that seems to be slowing down…” — Mandeep Singh [11:54]

• TSMC’s Competitive Moat

  • US tech giants are working on their own chips, but no imminent challenger to TSMC’s foundry dominance exists. Intel’s manufacturing investments are not yet seen as a threat ([14:27]).
  • “For now there is nothing on the horizon where you think an OpenAI or any of these chip companies is going to go to Intel for manufacturing their chips.” — Mandeep Singh [14:59]
  • UMC, once a peer, is “kind of a shadow of its former self”; TSMC’s efficiency and technological leadership are virtually unchallenged ([16:17]).
  • “TSMC, it feels like they have an unassailable moat and not just in terms of manufacturing but also their efficiency when it comes to using these semicap equipment tools…” — Mandeep Singh [16:34]

• AI Infrastructure Demands: Data Centers & Utilities

  • Demand for TSMC’s cutting-edge chips is set to stay red hot thanks to AI, as confirmed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s request for more capacity ([15:30]).
  • The next big bottleneck for hyperscalers is power, not GPUs. “Power is the biggest constraint, even more so than the GPUs, which was the case for the past three years.” — Mandeep Singh [17:48]

• What To Watch Next

  • Mandeep’s team is upping their gen AI market forecasts for 2026, with a new focus on tracking data center buildout and utility constraints ([17:05]).

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3. Tyson Foods Earnings and the US Cattle Conundrum

[21:14 - 25:51]

Key Points & Insights

• Tyson’s Q4 Beat Driven By Chicken, Beef Pressures Loom

  • Tyson’s fourth quarter was strong, buoyed by chicken segment performance; operational improvements have paid off ([21:52]).
  • “For a diversified protein company, that's putting a lot of eggs in one basket, so to speak.” — Jennifer Bartashus [22:13]

• US Beef Herd Constraints: No Relief Until 2028

  • US cattle herd rebuilding is hindered by high interest rates (raising costs), drought (limiting feed), and overall capital intensity ([22:50]).
  • “It's a little bit harder in the cattle business…there have been a lot of things that have held ranchers back from increasing the size of their herds,” with no significant supply increase expected until 2028. — Jennifer Bartashus [22:51]
  • Tyson reports minor heifer retention, but not enough to reverse tightness. High beef prices are here to stay ([23:35]).

• Political Scrutiny of Meatpackers

  • President Trump has called for a DOJ investigation into the meatpacking industry, blaming foreign ownership for high prices—for Bartashus, more a political maneuver than a solution ([24:10]).
  • US imports a lot of beef for ground product (mainly from Brazil) and tariffs play a role in price dynamics ([24:36]).

• Operational Agility is Key for Tyson

  • Tyson’s future success depends on operational execution, given limited control over weather, herd rebuilding, or disease outbreaks ([25:11]).

• Thanksgiving Turkey Prices

  • Frozen turkeys are abundant and pricing should be stable; fresh birds hit by avian flu likely pricier ([25:51]).
  • “If you're more interested in the fresh bird, your price is probably going to be a little bit higher this year than it was last year.” — Jennifer Bartashus [25:51]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Metsera’s GLP-1 Drug:

  • “Assets look great, they're competitive, and Pfizer just stood its ground and put the bid up… what clinched it was what we'd been going on about...Nova’s deal had a risk of not being able to pass due to competition, FTC issues.” — Sam Frazelli [03:13–03:53]

• On Sector Dynamics:

  • “I don't think there's an area perhaps antibiotics set aside that is not getting a significant amount of progress across some pharma company somewhere.” — Sam Frazelli [06:11]

• On TSMC’s Dominance:

  • “TSMC, it feels like they have an unassailable moat and not just in terms of manufacturing but also their efficiency...” — Mandeep Singh [16:34]

• On AI Growth Bottlenecks:

  • “Right now the consensus is your power is the biggest constraint, even more so than the GPUs...” — Mandeep Singh [17:48]

• On US Beef Outlook:

  • “From our estimate, we're not looking at a meaningful change in supply until 2028. So, you know, expect high beef pieces, beef prices to continue.” — Jennifer Bartashus [23:31]

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Key Timestamps by Segment

• Metsera Bidding War & Obesity Drug Landscape: [01:55–07:36]
• TSMC and Semiconductors’ AI Future: [10:37–18:14]
• Tyson Foods, Beef Prices, and Protein Supply Constraints: [21:14–25:51]
• Thanksgiving Turkey Insights: [25:45–25:51]

---

Summary Takeaways

• The end of the Metsera bidding war is a sign of shifting priorities and regulatory scrutiny in Big Pharma’s obesity race; antitrust concerns are real, but demand for innovation remains high.
• TSMC remains the irreplaceable AI chipmaker, but is stretched by capacity and supply chain realities; AI infrastructure growth is moving the market—and potentially the limits of the power grid.
• Tyson’s success is increasingly tied to its chicken segment, as supply headwinds in beef present challenges for years to come; political moves and holiday poultry prices remain top-of-mind for consumers and markets alike.

Transcript

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[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

Looking at the shares Matserra shares tumbled after Novo Nordisk declined to further raise its offer for the US Maker of an experimental weight loss drug, bringing a bidding war with Pfizer to an end. I like a good bidding war, being a former banker. San Frazelli joins us here. Director of Research for Global Industries. He covers all the health care stuff for Bloomberg Intelligence. He's based in London. So how good is this med, Serra Co. SAM and and their drug. How good is Medsrapy? Because boy, it seemed like everybody wanted a piece of it.

[Sam Frazelli (Director of Research, Global Industries, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Yeah. So Paul, before this last week, sorry I've been off and you know what happens to your brain when you're off for a few days.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

Yep.

[Sam Frazelli (Director of Research, Global Industries, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Before last week, which is called we had the obesity week right where my colleague Mark Shaw was at. There was a little bit of confusion around how good Their data was how good their assets were in the obesity space and some questions about can they really be dosed once a month if people wanted to do that, do we really know what the side effect profile is like given the, the way they've disclosed so far and of course last week it cleared most of it up. The side effect profile is the same as most of these GLP ones. You get some nausea, in some tough cases, you get some vomiting. But those are early on and they get out of the way. If you can withstand them, you seem to get the benefit and it seems to work pretty well as a once monthly drug. But there's always more wood to be chopped. You know what these things are like. So assets look great, they're competitive and Pfizer just stood his ground and put the bid up. And of course I think what clinched it was what we'd be going on for ages about for the past 10 days or 20 days is that Nova's deal had a risk of not being able to pass due to competition, FTC issues. And it sounds like the FTC had given Metsehra a call saying, look, if you go with that there is a risk it won't close, so do whatever you think is the right thing for your shareholders. And they did in the end. And Pfizer did up its bit.

[Jennifer Bartashus (Senior Retail Staples and Packaged Food Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Right.

[Host/Interviewer]

So Novo Nordisk won in a way in that Pfizer is paying up more. Does that actually work in Novo Nordisk favor or does it. Is it still as desperate as it was before to look for some new catalysts in the obesity market?

[Sam Frazelli (Director of Research, Global Industries, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

I mean, I'm not going to call Nova desperate. I think they have assets in there. I think they wanted to add some more options to the, that their sales reps bags over time. So I wouldn't call them desperate, but they're obviously by going after this they did say that we need more assets in our bank. So. And Lilly wasn't in the game. So it just gives them that gives you that flavor that, that they are. And I think the market's telling you that look at the divergence of the share price performance of Lilly versus Novo Nordisk that there's the market's favoring the drugs that Lilly's got on the market today and to compet they needed to get some more. So I think this is not the end for Novo at all in this space. There's lots of other interesting obesity assets coming up with different mechanisms. That's the thing that I think the company is now going to have to think about rather than Trying to go after the same mechanism all the time.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

So Sam, all these big, big cap pharmaceutical companies that you've covered for decades, I kind of always thought they were big diversified portfolios of lots of different drugs and therapeutics and but boy, when I look at the stocks this year, it seems like there's halves and have nots. If you have obesity exposure, the stocks are up and if you don't, they're down. Is that kind of how your world's evolved into over the last several years?

[Sam Frazelli (Director of Research, Global Industries, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

I would just give you one little caveat to that. AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca I think is doing fine. And then they have an obesity asset, but it's not their major game. They're big plays in oncology. Cardiovascular is coming is there and they're adding it to it. So yes, obesity was the is has been the talk of this this past 2025. I think you'll still be the talk of 2026, but there's a lot more going on in pharma. Neuroscience, diseases of the brain, diseases of mental health are getting much more attention. Cardiovascular, aside from obesity, is getting quite a lot of attention in heart to treat hypertension, etc. I have to tell you, I don't think there's an area perhaps antibiotics set aside that is not getting a significant amount of progress across some pharma company somewhere.

[Host/Interviewer]

Is what happened with Med, Sarah, Novo Doordisk and Pfizer an unabashed victory for Eli Lilly? I mean, does it just kind of keep on moving forward or does any of this kind of hurt Eli Lilly's market position?

[Sam Frazelli (Director of Research, Global Industries, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

No. I mean, at the end of the day there'll be multiple players in this space as there are now two at least. And I think Eli Lilly is currently very well placed with the assets that they have today to compete. And they're showing that they're competing very, very effectively and in some cases winning market share from Novo Nordisk.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

Sam, got about 30 seconds left. What's the little hindsight here? President Trump threatening medical funding at the university level. What's the update of there with the status of that?

[Sam Frazelli (Director of Research, Global Industries, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Yeah, it seems to be that some universities are getting some reprieve from general funding issues. But medical funding is something that I keep scratching my head on. I don't understand why you would want to cut off funding to research and funding to medicine in general because that is a major driver of economic boom in the US and it's not just medicine, it's also stem. I don't understand it.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence Coming up after this.

[Baillie Gifford Representative]

What is actual investing? We believe that it's a real world task to deliver thoughtful capital deployment. It's not about speculating over the short term. It's about understanding the long term opportunities for companies through technological progress or new business models. So we seek out those exploring big new ideas that will change the world. Then we back them to give those ideas time to flourish. Baillie Gifford Actual Investors Find out [e-mail].

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

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[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

Mandeep Singh just barely made it under the wire to get here to talk to us today. Then I, I was going to give him a hard time, but then I remembered he has like five other jobs. He's like senior research analyst covering technology. He manages a bunch of people.

[Host/Interviewer]

You know, he's also updating the AI tech guide that, that, that slide that you're always talking about, you know.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

All right, well, most cut him a break here. Mandeep Singh joins us here. He's our senior tech analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, managing herding a, you know, group of cats and managing research analysts because they by definition, they don't want to be managed. You know, Taiwan Semiconductor manufacturing, I usually don't pay attention to this one. It's chips and stuff like that. That's not a lot of fun. But this is interesting. They reported some numbers, slower growth. And I think for those that are concerned about the growth of this AI juggernaut that we've all been on over the couple of years, you're wondering, does slowing growth at Taiwan Semiconductor mean anything for the industry writ large? Mandy, what do you think when you saw the Taiwan Semiconductor numbers?

[Mandeep Singh (Senior Tech Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

I mean, Taiwan Semi is unique because they give you monthly numbers. So all of our companies report on a quarterly basis. And when I look at Taiwan Semi's quarterly results, they had over 30% growth, gave a guide where AI would be growing almost 50% plus over the next five years. And so if you know this deceleration is happening for a reason, I would attribute it to their diversification of their business. Because you have to remember Apple is more than 20% of their revenue. Nvidia is close to 20% now. And then they also have some autos revenue, some analog business. So what is happening right now is everyone is putting their dollars in AI capex, but then they have to take away spending from elsewhere. And so the non AI piece of the hardware spend that seems to be slowing down, although we haven't really seen that even with PC sales, things seem to be steady. But that could be one reason I can think of in terms of why that monthly number was slightly weak. And there could be seasonality as well. I mean, this is a month, a monthly number could happen that the next two months actually are above 30% and then the overall quarter may still look solid.

[Host/Interviewer]

Very good point. And just to recap the numbers, a 16.9% increase in October sales, which was on track with analyst estimates, but that is the slowest pace in about 18 months. I keep reading how TSMC is constrained by limited capacity. So if it wanted to, it would want, it would want to actually have a higher sales. It's just physically limited.

[Mandeep Singh (Senior Tech Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Well, limited capacity again on the AI side. Okay, so you know, TSMC does $120 billion run rate business in a year. So out of that AI is still 15%, you know, and so from that perspective, not everything that TSMC manufactures is at the cutting edge. And then you can slice it by leading versus you know, some of the trailing nodes. So from that perspective, the utilization is far higher in terms of the leading nodes versus some of the other nodes that they manufacture on. And it could happen that, you know, because of the lower utilization, they're not seeing as much customer orders flow in. And look, I mean it's hard to say for sure given you know, the book of their business and how many customers they have. And for some customers they are still the only game in town, you know.

[Host/Interviewer]

So TSMC makes custom chips for companies that order it from tsmc. It's a manufacturer. Overall, we know that all these big tech companies in the US are starting to turn on their own capabilities of making their own chips. Is that competition or is that out of necessity? I mean, does that take away market share from TSMC down the road?

[Mandeep Singh (Senior Tech Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

I mean, look, if intel is successful in terms of reviving itself on the manufacturing side, and that's what everyone is hoping, you know, with the initiative that the government taking a 10% stake in intel, that the fab side really gets a lift in terms of other companies using intel fabs to manufacture chips. That's when you got to be worried about tsmc. But for now there is nothing on the horizon where you think an OpenAI or any of these chip companies is going to go to intel for manufacturing their chips.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

And TSMC market cap 1.5 trillion stock up 55.0percent this year. Maybe I should pay a little more attention to this one. What do you think? In a related story, Nvidia again, more Bloomberg news reporting. These people are everywhere. Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said he had asked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing for more chip supplies as artificial intelligence demand remains strong. Yeah, so there you go. I mean, I mean that's. Hey, is this thing slowing down? Well, not The Jensen Huang, the Blackwell.

[Mandeep Singh (Senior Tech Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Ramp up is actually accelerating and if all the hyperscalers are telling you they're raising their capex for 2026 and it's going to be another 50% plus year, they need more TSMC capacity and Nvidia needs more TSMC allocation because TSMC can allocate to anyone outside of Nvidia as well. So from that perspective you can see how much Nvidia cares about TSMC capacity.

[Host/Interviewer]

Let me ask a dumb question. I used to cover Taiwan equities when I worked in Hong Kong and there are two big companies in Taiwan, TSMC and umc, United Microelectronics. And it feels like TSMC just ran away with it and UMC is kind of a shadow of its former self. Is there anyone, any company within in Taiwan that can really compete or even hope to compete against tsmc?

[Mandeep Singh (Senior Tech Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Not right now. And especially when it comes to leading nodes. I think that's where our TSMC talking about 2 nanometer, I mean we have seen why intel has struggled in the last five years because they were not able to make the NO transitions even though they are a leading node manufacturer. So from that perspective, I mean tsmc, it feels like they have an unassailable mode and not just in terms of manufacturing but also their efficiency when it comes to using these semicap equipment tools like they are probably the best in terms of the leverage they have shown in terms of the useful life of these tools that other manufacturing companies haven't been able to show.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

All right, got about a minute and a half left. Instead of me asking a dumb question, why don't I just say hey, what are you and your team working on? What's the next cool thing we need to be we're going to be reading about from you guys.

[Mandeep Singh (Senior Tech Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

I mean we are in the process of updating our gen AI numbers and they are going up for 2026. And also there's a heavy emphasis on data centers. So our next big report, our dashboard is going to be on data center utilization, data center capacity additions. Everyone is talking in terms of gigawatts. So OpenAI said they'll be adding 30 gigawatts over the next five years. Well, we want to track overall gigawatts from all these vendors, Microsoft, all the hyperscalers.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

Do we have a utilities analyst?

[Mandeep Singh (Senior Tech Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

We do.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

Who is that?

[Mandeep Singh (Senior Tech Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Well, I mean it's covered by multiple people. Rob Barnett.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

And now we got those guys become front and center. I mean do we have the grid to power all this stuff?

[Mandeep Singh (Senior Tech Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

I mean everyone has called out power. In fact, right now the consensus is your power is the biggest constraint, even more so than the GPUs, which was the case for the past three years.

[Host/Interviewer]

So it's always going to be something.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

Yeah. All right. And how many analysts are covering, like technology, broadly defined for bi, we're close to 20 people. 20 people globally. Right. They're not just stuck in New York. They're everywhere. Right?

[Host/Interviewer]

They're everywhere.

[Mandeep Singh (Senior Tech Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

You need that.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this. Support for the show comes from public.com you're thoughtful about where your money goes. You've got your core holdings, some recurring crypto buys, maybe even a few strategic option plays on the side. The point is, you're engaged with your investments and Public gets that. That's why they built an investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can put together a multi asset portfolio for the long haul. Stocks, bonds, options, crypto. It's all there. Plus an industry leading 3.6% APY high yield cash account. Switch to the platform built for those who take investing seriously. Go to public.com market and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com market paid for by Public Investing. All investing involves the risk of loss, including loss of principal. Brokerage services for U.S. listed registered securities options and bonds and a self directed account are offered by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Crypto trading provided by ZeroHash Complete disclosures [e-mail] Disclosures when you own your own.

[Host/Interviewer]

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[Mandeep Singh (Senior Tech Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Did my card go through?

[Sam Frazelli (Director of Research, Global Industries, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Oh, no.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

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[Host/Interviewer]

Let's head over now to company news because we do still have companies reporting earnings and Tyson is the latest to do so. Tyson, of course, reporting results today. And it looks like we had a fourth quarter adjusted earnings per share beat. And Jennifer Bartashas is joining us now. Jen covers senior she's our senior retail staples and packaged food analyst for here for us here at Bloomberg Intelligence. And Jen, you know, we think about Tyson, I think about chicken right away and higher demand for chicken certainly was a factor that helped fourth quarter results. But beef is going to be a problem down the road, isn't it?

[Jennifer Bartashus (Senior Retail Staples and Packaged Food Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Well, it's an interesting thing because obviously Tyson has been doing very well with the chicken business. They've invested in the last couple of years in improving their operations and we've seen that come through with a better margin, better operating usage and that sort of thing. But when we look at the guidance for next year, over half of their adjusted operating income is expected to come from chicken. And for a diversified protein company, that's putting a lot of eggs in one basket, so to speak. And so, you know, it, it, it's doing well. There's, there's a lot of momentum behind chicken in general. But Tyson is going to be very dependent on the continued success of that segment to hit its guidance for next year.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

Talk to us about the cattle herd in this country. How does that work here? I mean, prices are so high. And I thought for like a lot of commodities, when you see a price, you know, move materially higher, it brings on more supply. But I guess it's a little different in the cattle business. What's your understanding?

[Jennifer Bartashus (Senior Retail Staples and Packaged Food Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Yeah, it's a little bit harder in the cattle business. You know, you have to Remember that raising cattle is a, it's a capital intensive activity. And so there have been a lot of things that, that have held ranchers back from increasing the size of their herds. We've had high interest rates because a lot of, a lot of them have to borrow in order to rebuild herds. We've had drought conditions, especially in the west and in the south, which make it difficult to commit to raising more animals if your land can't sustain them. And so those are some of the kind of structural impediments that have really held us back from what we would typically, at this point, have expected to see, see some rebuilding of those herds already. You know, Tyson says they see a couple of indicators in the Northwest or in, sorry, in the upper Midwest that there's some, some heifer retention coming. That means that, that cows are not being sent to slaughter, but it's not enough to really move the needle. So from our estimate, we're not looking at a meaningful change in supply until 2028. So, you know, expect high beef pieces, beef prices to continue.

[Host/Interviewer]

Yeah, okay, so not great news if you're a hamburger lover. And it's because these consumer beef prices that are at record highs is what prompted President Trump to ask the DOJ to investigate the meatpacking industry. He is blaming majority foreign owned companies for driving up these beef prices. Jen, how do you think about this?

[Jennifer Bartashus (Senior Retail Staples and Packaged Food Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Well, you know, when you look at this, I mean, the, this seems like it's more of a political maneuver than actually based on anything from a market perspective at this point. We will see what the DOJ comes up with and what they actually share. But this seems to be looking for a rationalization for high beef prices versus actually understanding what the market fundamentals are. And the other thing you have to remember is that we import a huge amount of beef, especially for ground beef from Brazil, and we have tariffs on that. So part of the, you know, part of the government's own policy is contributing to the higher beef prices, but that's not part of this investigation at all.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

All right, so what's next for Tyson is this, I mean, are these kind of companies, are they, how much did they have in their control? Because they don't have control of herd sizes and bird flus and things like that.

[Host/Interviewer]

Whether the weather.

[Paul Sweeney (Bloomberg Host)]

Exactly. How do investors kind of invest in a, in a company like, like Tyson's?

[Jennifer Bartashus (Senior Retail Staples and Packaged Food Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Yeah, you really have to look at how are they controlling what they can control. And so that comes down to their operations. Are they generating the efficiency they need to out of their plants? Are they operating at capacity? Do they still have excess capacity to fill? It really comes down to operational execution in this kind of backdrop when there are a lot of unknown variables that can impact supply. But ultimately, you know, supply, at least for chicken, does look pretty good. It looks pretty solid. So if all things go well, you know, Tyson should be in a position to be able to hit that. Guidance.

[Host/Interviewer]

Before we let you go, Jen, what does pricing for turkeys look like as we get closer to Thanksgiving?

[Jennifer Bartashus (Senior Retail Staples and Packaged Food Analyst, Bloomberg Intelligence)]

Yeah, you know, turkey, turkey has been hit harder by avian flu than, than chicken. And so if you're talking about a frozen turkey, you're going to be fine. Those turkeys have been in frozen storage for quite a while. They'll be ready to go. If you're more interested in the fresh bird, your price is going to probably going to be a little bit higher this year than it was last year.

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