The space race has been heating up with multiple companies sending rockets up for reasons ranging from creating internet connectivity to tourism. Now, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, plans to build its own version of the International Space Station. That’s a huge project and it’s a move that even a Bezos-backed company can’t take on on its own so Sierra Space, Boeing and other companies will be involved. In addition, we’ll also be talking to the managing director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index to find out how Americans feel about their computers and appliances.

Transcript

Sam Bailey  0:14  Welcome to 7investing Now, a show that teaches you how to take a long term view on investing by better understanding what’s happening in the market now.

Dan Kline  0:24  Good afternoon, happy November. Happy new 7investing picks. My name of course is Daniel Brooks Kline. I am the host of this show 7investing Now. I’m being joined today by Steve Symington. Steve, we’re going to talk about what’s new in the space race. When that’s over, going to play an interview I did with David VanAmburg. He is the managing director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. And we talked about customer satisfaction with PCs and with appliances. I think we all got to know our refrigerators a little bit better during the past 18 months.

We of course would like your questions and comments. But Steve, before we get to what’s new in the space race, I will ask the same question I asked JT Street on Friday’s show. What is your favorite Halloween candy?

Steve Symington  1:10  My favorite Halloween candy? Heath. But only because they don’t make many Score bars. So that’s it.

Dan Kline  1:17  It is amazing. So I mentioned the Score. All three of us were leaning towards the Score. But I agree it’s not a Halloween candy. Like very few people value the Score. And the full size Score bar has probably been the most shrunk of all candies.

That is not of course, what you are here to talk about. We’re gonna talk about what’s next in the space race. And Steve, I’m gonna leave this to you. Jeff Bezos did something really interesting. And I didn’t even know this was a thing. So why don’t you fill the audience in a little bit on what’s happening and sort of why it matters. There’s sort of a side angle for investors here.

Steve Symington  1:51  Right? And he’ll take credit, obviously, because he basically stepped down as CEO of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) so that he could focus on Blue Origin. And this is his space company. They took Shatner to the low, basically just into microgravity areas, not necessarily space, as we think of it, orbiting like the SpaceX missions. But really interesting that just a couple of days ago, they announced what they’re calling Orbital Reef, it’s a space station, not unlike the International Space Station that they plan to build in orbit, and they’re hoping to have it ready. It’s just a concept right now, so keep that in mind. This isn’t something that is going to be done next year. Probably by the end of this decade. So in the next eight, nine years, we should see this happening.

But it’s a really interesting project. And it’s not just Blue Origin, it’s a bunch of other companies. Sierra Space is maybe the most prominent partner, it’s a privately held company. But also some other small space stocks that popped pretty hard on the news. Redwire (NYSE: RDW) is one of them. RDW I believe is the ticker for that one. But some really, really interesting companies and a lot of businesses that will take part in the production and assembly and creation of this Orbital Reef space station.

Dan Kline  3:13  Boeing (NYSE: BA) is involved as well, but don’t go out and buy Boeing stock. Because as I evaluate Boeing, this is this is just gonna be a few planes helping to get stuff up into the air. This is not a game changer for Boeing.

Steve, I’ve been working on a space station, but it’s made of LEGO. So I’m not super confident it’s gonna be able to be orbital. But that being said, do we need a new international space station? Is there a demand for this?

Steve Symington  3:37  Yeah. And this is something I guess to keep in mind is the International Space Station is 20 years old. And I think, what was it 2030, is when the funding is set to lapse for the space station. They’ll probably renew it. It’s not like they’re gonna waste that because it was like $100 billion dollar project to build the International Space Station.

Dan Kline  3:56  And also, what do you do? Just let it fall to Earth? Let the astronauts run out of food? It feels like you pretty much have to at least have a wind down plan on that one.

Steve Symington  4:06  Yeah. So I mean, it’s not going to go away the International Space Station, but it’s also showing signs of its age. And there were a couple of incidents where there was a misfire on a rocket or something. And it kind of temporarily brought it out of its regular orbit, or not orbit, but its regular rotation. So that was I think, the second emergency situation that they had with astronauts on board this year, I believe. So definitely kind of showing its age a little bit.

But this should be really interesting. Orbital Reef should be really interesting in that it’s kind of a mixed use project. So you’ll be able to, I think the idea is that by then we should have some, orbital space tourism. And then of course, like microgravity research, orbital research projects, scientific stuff, astronauts, all kinds of ways that this can be used. And it won’t just be the International Space Station anymore. So I think this is kind of the next big stage that we’ll see with the the space economy in general. Which is already huge, right? But this is going to be something where we start to see people going to space and doing these sorts of things is more “normal”. Normal as it can be anyway.

So it’s going to be fun to watch, I think, unfold. And right now, we’re going to have a lot of people kind of picking apart these sorts of projects to figure out who are the largest beneficiaries. Especially relative to their current size and growth potential. So, someone might look at Boeing and say, uhhh, I don’t really want to buy that, because they’re involved in this project, obviously. And there’s a lot of privately held space companies that you just simply can’t own a piece of.

But then there’s small companies like Redwire, which I think it has a market cap of just under $800 million. So this is something that could really move the needle for them. As far as space components go. But we’ll also see some consolidation in this space. We had, Simon Erickson and I, our CEO, had a chance to talk with the CEO and CFO of Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB). Their CEO is Peter Beck, we chatted with him, and he said, there’s gonna be some consolidation in the “space” space, right. And that’s kind of like they acquired a satellite components company, I believe it was called Sinclair Interplanetary last year, and you’re gonna see a lot of those smaller companies get gobbled up by the big players so that they’re not just sourcing out everything they want to be vertically integrated.

Dan Kline  6:40  Steve Blue Origin’s mission isn’t necessarily to make money, it’s to save humanity in a broader sense. And Jeff Bezos, as maligned as he is, is putting a billion dollars a year of his own money into this. Is the money to be made in these smaller companies? They’re going to get paid, whether there’s a monetization plan for the space station, and there’s like a vague monetization plan involving like tourism and bringing astronauts up, and that doesn’t really matter because can’t buy Blue Origin. But is it really all these other innovative vendors that are are going to get paid and going to get their price to build and maintain this type of space station?

Steve Symington  7:15  Yeah, I think a lot of them will fail in the next decade or so, or get acquired just for their technology. And then you’ll just stop hearing about them because they’ll be a part of a much larger business. But there’s a lot of money to be made. And yes, some of the smaller players are going to get paid.

But I think what’s going to be even more interesting to watch is sort of the wealth created in the process. For both investors who can figure out the businesses that can effectively stand alone with their offerings into the space economy. And also the large privately held businesses right now. I’ll be curious to see whether companies like SpaceX for example, Elon Musk’s pet project in space. It’s more than a pet project now, obviously, that’s saying he’s on track to become the world’s first billionaire [trillionaire], because of his stake in SpaceX. I think, it has something like an $80 or $100 billion valuation by itself, and growing, right.

So I don’t know what Blue Origin is valued at. But obviously Jeff Bezos stake in that certainly can’t hurt his wealth. But yeah, the primary goal isn’t necessarily to make money, it’s to build something scalable. And over the longer term, I think the rest will follow for these businesses. But yeah, a lot of money to be made.

Dan Kline  8:28  Steve, last question here. Is taking the space station, which had previously been a government run project and sort of farming it out to private business, and this is not the only plan for an ISS replacement, but it is the most prominent one. Is this just the end of NASA, the end of governments sort of funding these things? Look I like this model, we didn’t have any space innovation for basically our entire childhoods. It was the space shuttle goes up, the space shuttle comes down, and now we’ve had all this sort of massive innovation. So is this really just the final move in this big switch?

Steve Symington  9:04  The Final Frontier you mean? You just missed an opportunity?

Dan Kline  9:08  Star Trek is the most boring of the space shows. Hit me up @worstideas7 and tell me I’m wrong.

Steve Symington  9:15  Yeah, DM Dan, we might have just lost like a quarter of the audience. Anyway, Yeah, I applaud the way this is moving forward from being primarily government run low priority. How do you make money in this? How do you sustain this? This is how. And when you have commercial companies like Blue Origin, and SpaceX and so many other space oriented businesses actually generating real shareholder value, and embracing this kind of capitalist approach to creating space, I think it ends up coming to the benefit of humanity in this world. And people don’t realize just how much.

This is more than a billionaires space race, right? That’s something I take issue with when I hear, “oh the billionaires is just want to go to space and have a ride”. That’s not the goal. And I think people underestimate just how many technological innovations come from space-based research. And it’s not just people riding up there to have fun. A lot of amazing things have come from space to date. And I think it’s only going to accelerate.

When you talk about satellite connectivity, that helps bring internet connectivity to two thirds of the world that currently isn’t connected, which is bonkers to me, something we sort of take for granted as part of a developed, wealthy nation. And this, that’s just one one example of I think how space technology is going to improve. We could spend multiple podcasts on this.

Dan Kline  10:47  And it’s not just like parts of the world you think of as underdeveloped. There’s no good internet setup where my family has a house in in Jaffrey New Hampshire. We have to use satellite internet, which is vastly inferior to Starlink. So if someone lived there, getting Starlink, which would be an option would make a ton of sense. And we talked about Steve, I spend a lot of time in the Bahamas, where there’s not good internet, the best internet in the Bahamas is 3g, so that means it’s not fun watching a Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) movie. That means a lot of companies can’t expand there. And I actually push back pretty aggressively.

When you look at the billionaire space race, Elon Musk has a profit motive and that’s fine. Profit is good. Jeff Bezos actually believes for humanity to survive, we need to go to Mars. And all of science fiction more or less says that’s true. And I realized science fiction isn’t fact. But if you look at like most growth trajectories in the US like it is grow or die. And at some point, we’re not going to be able to grow. And I know that’s that’s hard to think of when you live in Montana, when there’s a lot of space. Or even here in Florida, where basically aside from the Orlando area, the whole middle of the state between the coast is empty, eventually those places are going to fill up. Plus we’re going to sink so like where I live is not necessarily going to be viable 100 years from now.

But with that, Steve, you talked about benefits for humanity. And I want to talk about how we benefit humanity. We of course, at 7investing, that is a terrible segue.

Here at 7investing on the first of the month, we release our highest conviction stock picks. Each one of our lead advisors, makes a stock pick and an enormous amount of research goes into this. My picks tend to be in the retail space. But my pick is actually a tech company this month or maybe you wouldn’t define it as a tech company. Maybe you’d look at it as something else. We have healthcare experts on the team. We have biotech experts on the team. That would be Dana Abramovitz and Maxx Chatsko. Matt Cochrane is in the payment space, Anirban Mahanti is in the bleeding edge of technology. Simon Erickson knows technology as well, but he also has more knowledge of more companies. Like sometimes Maxx will throw something out on the Slack board, I wouldn’t have even heard of the company and Simon will have this like evolved opinion about it.

So the amount of intelligence on our team, and Steve I’m not leaving you out. Steve, of course picks internet meme stocks. No, he does not. He does not in any way do that. His pick this month is a risky one. But it’s a smart one. It is a very, very good company. Steve, if someone wants to become a member, they could of course drive to my house and hand me some Bitcoin. But that is not the preferred way to do it. How would someone join 7investing? And what would that cost them?

Steve Symington  13:32  I’m still processing the “hand you some Bitcoin” comment.

Dan Kline  13:37  It’s a pretty good conceptual joke.

Steve Symington  13:40  It’s amazing. There’s so many layers. But yes, www.7investing.com/subscribe, you can join us for $49 a month $399 a year. And that gives you access to all seven of our stock picks and all of our scorecard to-date since we launched the company. So you can look back and look at our performance. And you can filter them down, figure out which ones you like the most. We also do that ourselves and say these are the stocks we like the most from our scorecard. So those are sort of bonus picks people get every month but yeah, I think it’s it’s one of those unrivaled values. In my humble opinion.

Dan Kline  14:13  We of course also have an annual option for students if you are an active student, it is $84 a year. If you are buying it for an active student, just shoot us an email at info@7investing.com. If you’re not the actual student yourself and Steve will take care of that. We are the best value in investing there is nobody else out there that gives you seven lead advisors of the quality we have at 7investing. No one told me to say that that is my actual honest belief about the quality of this team.

But if you have some questions, if you have some comments. I’m going to stick around until after this interview to say goodbye to everybody. But Steve, gonna let you head out. Thank you for doing this. I know the first of the month is an incredibly busy day for you. So enjoy the work. Enjoy Montana.

JT Street, let me tee it up here. We are going to move to my interview with David VanAmburg. David is the managing director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. What does that mean? They do an exhaustive study to see how Americans feel about all these different segments of the economy. David’s someone I’ve had on a lot, because I am, you know Steve, I am customer service obsessed. It’s the one thing that like drives me insane when a company doesn’t do it well, or on a basic level fails it.

But this time, we talked about computers, and appliances. We all bought computers, we all bought appliances during the pandemic, or we got really, really acquainted with our refrigerators and our grills and our stoves because we weren’t going anywhere. So do you wanna hit that JT Street, we would appreciate it. And then I’ll be back after this roughly 15 minute interview.

David VanAmburg welcome back to the program. We’re gonna call this take two, because we did this a little bit before we had some internet glitches. Hopefully, it will go better today. But David, you are the managing director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. So your job is essentially overseeing this massive project that rates customer satisfaction, as we’ve gone through the pandemic here. Has there been any overall trend that you’ve seen? Before we get into the specific report we’re going to talk about today? Have there’s been has there been any overall trend that just sort of pops up that colors these results? Because these are not normal times? As I’m sure you know.

David VanAmburg  16:23  No they’re not normal times. And I think we’ve talked about each one of these industries over the months, you and I, throughout 2020. And every time we said, all right, let’s just take these with a grain of salt. And then when we get to 2021, we’ll be talking about something different. And we’re in 2021 and we’re still not really talking about a whole lot that’s different. Because we still aren’t out of this, right. It’s better, certainly. And yes, overall, that is the trend we’re seeing, we saw a huge drop off in customer satisfaction in the aggregate nationally. The whole sort of household consumption experience, really fell off a cliff in 2020. And it’s not really improving, per se, at this point in 2021. But it’s leveled off. We’ve kind of troughed and I think we’re seeing maybe the inklings of a little bit of a rebound in customer satisfaction. Nothing huge yet, but hopefully, more good to come.

Dan Kline  17:22  So we’re going to talk about your computer and household appliances, reports. There’s something you mentioned to me, that actually surprised me. I brought up that people were a little more tolerant, because they took whatever computer they could get. I told you earlier that I had to buy a couple of laptops, I had to briefly buy a desktop because we just couldn’t find a laptop. But you actually saw a bit of a shift in what types of computers people are buying.

David VanAmburg  17:45  We saw a little bit of a shift towards desktop computers. Could be as you were talking earlier about availability. You go to the store, and you really want a laptop, but the desktops are not the things that are going like hotcakes anymore. Two thirds of the purchases in the past year, according to our study were laptops. And that’s not surprising. And that’s probably part of the problem, right, all the laptops are gone, or most of them are gone.

So there’s a little bit more of a trend towards purchasing desktops for that reason. And also, I think, just kind of anchored to the reliability and the power of desktops for a lot of folks who are being told right now, just go ahead and keep working from home, somewhat indefinitely until things really change. So the idea is, well, I’m gonna get something really, really powerful, and really good. And have a true mini office setting in my own home, rather than, a laptop or a tablet, which are great, but they don’t have the the power of a lot of these really good desktop machines.

Dan Kline  18:48  No, and many people were working in offices where even if they have a laptop, they’re plugging it into a dock. They’ve got the big monitor, they’ve got the keyboard. I know it was very tricky for my wife to be one day a week in the office, maybe two for the last few months and really had to duplicate her office setup for eyestrain reasons. So this can be tricky. But overall, people were actually happier with with computer makers, right? Like it’s picked up a little bit.

David VanAmburg  19:13  That’s right, we saw a little jump from 78 to 79 on ACSI’s zero to 100 scale. So a little bit of an improvement driven mostly, interestingly, perhaps surprisingly, enough by a big gain for call center satisfaction. People who had issues, problems, looking for patches, upgrades, whatnot, calling into these PC makers call centers, contact centers. The PC makers did a better job. Now, one could argue that they are stepping up in the context of the times. They know so many more people are working from home. So many more people are relying so much more heavily on these devices now, and they better step up to the plate. They better actually do a good job of helping them resolve whatever issues they have.

Dan Kline  20:07  That is not usually how customer service goes. So I’m glad to see that. So Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) still led the survey, but they came in about the same as last year with an 82, which I believe was a pretty good number on your report. But at the bottom here, and then we’ll talk about Apple in a second. Samsung dropped by 2%. But they’re still in the the sort of middle of the report. The real drop, was Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) dropped by 5% from a 78 to a 74. Do you think that’s largely because Amazon doesn’t make serious devices? Like, I’m not sure like your Kindle was meant to become like your work replacement? It’s meant to like watch the Avengers while you’re on a plane.

David VanAmburg  20:42  Yeah, I don’t want to get in trouble for calling it not a serious device. I suppose Amazon would would shoot me for that. But yes, I mean, in the sense that this is one that isn’t quite an apples to apples comparison. They are tablets, so they get into this study as a result of manufacturing the Kindles. But a Kindle isn’t a Dell desktop, it isn’t a Surface Pro, it isn’t some of these other devices that the other manufacturers on this list make. So yes, in that sense it’s taken a hit, but it’s a much more limited kind of technology relative to the rest of the industry.

Dan Kline  21:18  So the second piece of this report is household appliances, and household appliance scores actually fell a little bit. And I would argue, I had never thought about what brand name my appliances were. We bought a new refrigerator freezer during the middle of this. And my wife was insistent we not going to Samsung. Which is actually the top rated one on your report. But she had read something somewhere. And of course, the only company that made what we wanted was Samsung. And of course then we finally bought something and it arrived four months later. And then we sold that house a month later. So I wasted like two grand.

But that being said, do you think this fell because we’re asking more from our appliances? Like we’re all home, like the fridge had to work a lot harder, the microwave was not just heating your food, it was like a friend. Like, is some of this just expectations?

David VanAmburg  22:06  Yeah. And, also probably circumstances surrounding real use, right. I mean, things are going to wear more, break more, you’re going to have more issues, when you’re suddenly using that microwave to make your food, your kids food, because they’re learning from home because of virtual school last year, and all kinds of things. I mean, we were just in the house all the time. I’m not used to making lunch for my kids, they go to school, and they have lunch in the cafeteria there.

But every day it was preparing food, which means that then using the dishwasher, and lots of appliances, getting used a lot more. Which means you can end up with more breakage. And breakage could even be, in our one anecdotal instance, it wasn’t the microwave stopped working, it was that we literally cracked the handle of the door. It just kind of it just pulled off, and I had to have a service guy come in and replace it. So I think wear and tear, in addition to just, the expectations of, I’m home all the time with these lovable, wonderful appliances, and I’m going to use them a lot more. And maybe they aren’t quite as great as I thought they were when I didn’t have to use them so much.

Dan Kline  23:22  We also had a microwave issue, the “1” stopped working, so I could put something in the microwave for 59 seconds or 72 seconds or whatever it was. But I couldn’t hit “1” and have it be a minute. But that didn’t seem like something you replace your microwave for.

So yeah, now is some of this. And this is a very small drop. It’s a one point drop. So it’s not like it’s a giant. But do you think also supply chain was an issue. Like I mentioned, we bought a refrigerator freezer, and we ordered it on Memorial Day, and it showed up on Labor Day. Like that is literally how long it took for what would normally be a stock item. There was some dissatisfaction there. Not just with the maker, but also with Lowe’s (NYSE: LOW) where you bought it, also with XPO logistics (NYSE: XPO) that delivered it and did kind of a terrible job. Like so, I wasn’t feeling great about that refrigerator freezer, but it actually didn’t have anything to do with the refrigerator freezer itself.

David VanAmburg  24:16  Yeah, definitely supply chain issues. And really across the durables. I mean, we all know about the microchip problem with autos, right.

Dan Kline  24:25  Consumer electronics as well, your refrigerator uses chips too.

David VanAmburg  24:29  Exactly. So, I was gonna say that extends to the availability of the range of models and things that you might like to have for a refrigerator or a dishwasher or a PC. You go to Best Buy and you just can’t find the model you really want so you settle for something else and you’re not as happy with it. And the difficulty there, Dan, is that we’re talking about durables, if I head to Kroger (NYSE: KR) and my wife’s looking for a certain Coke Zero product and it’s not on the shelf, I’ll get her something else, maybe she’s not entirely happy about it because it wasn’t available. But a week later, it’s going to be and it’s a Coke.

We don’t consume these durable products every week, every month, every year. We want to make big ticket purchases that we expect to have around for a long, long time. So we want to get it right. And we want what we want, right? We don’t want to settle for something else that we’re stuck with for maybe years. So I think that has a big impact in terms of supply chain. Bigger than on non-durables or other kinds of, services that we that we consume.

Dan Kline  25:33  So is this just an area where these results may show something different? But they also may not? We’ve had this discussion, a lot of times, where you might look back five years from now and tell everybody not to consider your 2020 and your 2021 reports without having a little bit of an asterisk on them.

David VanAmburg  25:54  Yeah, I mean, to some extent, I think that’s going to be true. And that’s going to be true throughout the economy. Economists are going to talk about the wild swings in spending and GDP growth or shrinkage over these last two years that look really crazy right now on long term graphs. What do they mean? They mean, there was a pandemic in 2020, and 2021. They don’t necessarily speak to larger infrastructure issues that are endemic in economic problems as we try to grow ourselves as an economy. So I think the same should should be noted when it comes to how satisfied we are with all of these things that we’re purchasing and consuming in a really upside down world for the last few years.

Dan Kline  26:40  David VanAmburg, managing director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, I will ask one last question. And I’ll ask it because this is how I feel. And I want to know, do you think if people are being more understanding? Because if I went to the grocery store 18 months ago, and I wanted gluten free rotini, and all they had was penne, I would have been like mad. Like, how are they possibly out of the pasta shape I want. Now, if they have gluten free something, I’m going to be okay. And I realize there’s a certain percentage of the population that isn’t going to deal with this. But as a country, have we maybe gotten relaxed a little bit about exactly having our specific needs met? Because things have been out of stock?

David VanAmburg  27:21  I think in that sense, yes. I mean, I think we’re not tolerant in all kinds of other ways that we probably don’t want to get into. Airline flight attendants being beat up over mask rules and stuff like that. But when it comes to availability of merchandise, yes, I think generally speaking in a retail environment, over the last 18 months. Anything we need to buy, anything that we’re really excited to find, where we’ve become a bit more tolerant, that it just may not be available. I think we’re a little less frustrated. Now I think initially, everyone was extremely frustrated as there was runs on toilet paper, and you name it, in the early part of the pandemic.

But I think we’re a little more tolerant, now that Amazon’s out of that particular size, or that color or whatever. It’ll be interesting to see what happens during the holiday shopping season. Because there have been a lot of warnings out there about supply chain having a huge impact on kids toys, for example. And just the availability of inventories for various things as people start shopping, starting around Halloween and getting through the Thanksgiving holiday and into the, into the December holidays.

Dan Kline  28:35  Obviously, in the first few months of the pandemic, when you couldn’t get things like toilet paper that you needed. That’s very stressful. And then when it became, well, I can get toilet paper, but it’s some weird Chinese brand I’ve never heard of, you’re just so thrilled to get it. I call it, and I think I’ve said this to you before, the golden age of Brawny paper towels. Nobody goes to the supermarket, and be like you know what I want, Brawny paper towels. But if they’re the only ones on the shelves, you’re pretty happy. And I’ve always pictured their corporate HQ just high fiving the whole pandemic. Because they had a resurgence. But we did become a little bit more willing to not use exactly our flavor or exactly our size. I’ll give you the last word here.

David VanAmburg  29:15  Yeah, I’ll just add to that, to the comment that you just made. The thing that I think, and this is my personal anecdote, but I have many friends who have experienced the same thing. It’s not frustrating, but I think all of us can point multiple times to things that we’ve looked for in the store and couldn’t find and wondered to ourselves, “why in the world are they out of that”? Like you think, that’s something I can’t imagine that many other people buy or eat and yet it’s gone. And maybe gone for weeks and weeks and weeks. And then you just think, is that ever coming back? You know it could be some obscure brand, not necessarily an obscure company, it could be something Kraft makes but it’s not one of their, it’s not a main item, Kraft mayo or something, right. It’s just some other little thing, and you think, week after week I go to Kroger or wherever, and it’s still not there. It’s just one of those really interesting phenomenon, the stuff that seems to be running out. Because it’s not toilet paper anymore, right. It’s not like the basic stuff. It’s just some interesting products that you can’t find now.

Dan Kline  30:20  And some of that is manufacturing choice, Kraft may decide, wow, we’re selling a lot more ketchup, we have to put more resources on ketchup and less resources on whatever this product is. And I also think consumers, and I’ll have just a very quick comment on this, don’t understand ordering cycles. So I mentioned gluten free before, I largely eat gluten free for allergy reasons. And I like a certain companies baguettes. But that’s not a big company on the shelves. So I’m sure that the Publix I go to doesn’t order just the baguettes, when they’re out, they have a certain dollar ordering point where it’s worth it to place that order, which is why when they have them, I buy a lot. And I’m sure other people have the same behavior. So they’re always out of stock. So we’re learning the nuance of customer satisfaction during this. And I’m really curious as we go through these reports next year, the next couple years what that is going to look like. David, thank you for joining us today on 7investing Now.

As always a pleasure. Thanks, Dan.

Dan Kline: Thank you, David VanAmburg. Thank you, Steve Symington. Thank you Sam Bailey. Thank you JT Street. If you would like to get in touch with us, it is very easy to do. It is info@7investing.com. That’s for questions about your membership, questions about becoming a member. If you are a member, you’re trying to find something. Absolutely. Something to talk about. If you have a question for us. JT let’s close out with this comment from Karen.

I can’t read it from here, but I will read it when you put it up on the screen. “Will you give three top benefits of space investment to life on Earth? I grew up loving seeing rockets go into space in my Boomer childhood but wonder how the space trips exploration helps solve degrading Earth issues or humanity’s problems”.

So I am not as big an expert as Steve is on this. But in general, the innovations we’ve had to create for space have been beneficial for us on Earth. And sort of the work you put into that does sort of trickle down and you create new materials, you create ways to build things. I think 3D printing is going to make leaps and bounds because of space travel. Now, is any of that going to benefit us as investors? I don’t know the answer to that.

But with that said, Karen, thank you for the question. Send it to info@7investing.com and we are more than happy for Steve to answer that, or even share it on Twitter and we can all weigh in and then maybe move to our Discord. With that, thank you all for watching. We will be back on Wednesday with the Anirban Mahanti, see ya’ll.