EP330 · Economy · first published 2025-05-12
Berkshire, Novo and Hims | Henri Blomster, Jesse Viljanen | Negotiator 330
Three investors work through three companies: the aftermath of Berkshire Hathaway's Omaha meeting, Novo Nordisk's position against Eli Lilly, and Hims & Hers, which has returned roughly 700 per cent for the host. No investment advice is given and that is said out loud several times; all three hold positions in the companies discussed. On Berkshire the episode covers the 347 billion dollar cash pile Buffett says he does not want, GEICO's turnaround under Todd Combs, the Japanese trading houses, and why the ten per cent ownership ceiling constrains further buying. On Novo, Jesse Viljanen argues the share is down about 60 per cent from its highs although the gap to Eli Lilly is small and the valuation gap is fourfold, and that efficacy is not the only criterion — safety and manufacturing capacity decide. Henri Blomster argues Hims & Hers is mispriced because the market files it as a telehealth platform when the company operates in a different dimension: the pharmacy is under the same roof and the aim is to go beneath the insurance deductible. Oura and EHang close it out. Published 12 May 2025.
Berkshire, Novo and Hims | Henri Blomster, Jesse Viljanen
Summary: In episode 330 Sami Miettinen works through three companies with Jesse Viljanen (the Dividend Engineer) and Henri Blomster (Asilo Asset Management): the aftermath of Berkshire Hathaway’s Omaha annual meeting, Novo Nordisk’s position against Eli Lilly, and Hims & Hers, which has returned roughly 700 per cent for the host since Blomster’s previous visit. Published 12 May 2025.
No investment advice, and the parties hold positions. The episode states several times that no investment advice is being given — the first time in the opening, with the words do not believe anything said here. In addition: Miettinen holds positions in both Hims & Hers and Novo Nordisk, Novo is Viljanen’s largest position, and Blomster is a professional asset manager whose fund holds Hims & Hers. This article describes the views; it does not assess whether they are right.
A note on reading this. The article is curated from the episode’s transcript. The subtitle track is YouTube’s automatic captioning, de-rolled from 3,351 cues to 1,674; it mangles drug and company names, which have been verified separately here. All figures are as given in the episode and describe the position in May 2025. Timestamps refer to that transcript.
1. From Omaha: what the meeting was
Viljanen and Miettinen attended Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting. Viljanen decided fairly suddenly, persuaded by Heikki Keskiväli, and arrived a week early to see the city as well (03:04).
His verdict is unambiguous:
The experience was much better than I thought it would be when I set off. I have always had respect for Warren, but it rose even higher when you notice he is 94 and still extremely sharp. (03:04)
A practical detail that says what kind of event it is: they queued three hours before the doors opened and got to the front row. Miettinen thinks Keskiväli’s arrangements were perhaps slightly over-cautious but concedes it was worth it (03:49).
The property question. Buffett was asked why he does not invest in real estate. The answer, as Miettinen relays it, was that property negotiations are dull and take years — Munger liked them, Buffett wants to decide in five minutes (04:35). Miettinen challenged that: does he buy companies in five minutes too? Buffett’s answer was that you have to read the papers, and the more you read the better you get at it. Viljanen notes in passing that about half of his own portfolio is in investment apartments (04:35).
The handover. Buffett announced he is stepping aside but is not selling his shares (05:20). Greg Abel’s energy unit had a strong quarter, and Viljanen’s observation about Abel is shrewd: he answered like a politician rather than directly — which is also understandable, because everyone there listens to every word (07:40).
Tim Cook was present and not grilled this time. He said Buffett had created more value than he himself or Steve Jobs, which Miettinen reads as groundwork for the handover. His dry comment: nice of him to say something positive, given he has sold billions’ worth of Apple shares (10:43).
2. Berkshire’s problem is its size
This is the episode’s clearest structural observation, and it recurs.
The cash. Berkshire had, in Viljanen’s account, 347 billion dollars in free cash, and Buffett said at the meeting plainly that this is not the situation he wants:
They would rather have 50 billion and have bought something sensible with the 300, but valuations are so massive that nothing sensible has been found. (13:00)
Buffett nevertheless expected something to appear within five years.
Why buying is hard. The problem is not only price but scale. Berkshire would prefer to stay below a 10 per cent ownership stake, and there are no longer companies large enough to take meaningful positions in (09:58). Buffett has himself said that as a smaller operator he could generate returns in a completely different way.
Coca-Cola is Blomster’s example of exactly this. His distinction is precise: at the time of purchase it could well have been in Asilo’s portfolio, but today it is a player of a size that would not be a first choice (08:27). The reasoning follows Asilo’s strategy: we try to invest in the coming winner in something that is producing a winner, and at some point we exit. Coca-Cola already is the winner (09:12).
Miettinen puts the same point differently: if the portfolio is a trillion rather than nearer two hundred million, the options are scarce.
GEICO. Viljanen had looked into it specifically. In his account the company had considerable difficulties in recent years, but Todd Combs fixed two large problems — one in telematics and one in risk pricing. Headcount was cut substantially and savings of around two billion followed, after which the company is once again as competitive as any of the other operators (06:53).
AmEx. Blomster’s assessment is positive and the reasoning interesting: a credit card company’s product is very simple — extending credit — but AmEx has built an ecosystem around it, a club feel and restaurant operations. It is no wonder it has grown so well (11:29).
Japan. Berkshire owns five Japanese trading houses worth roughly 20 billion dollars, and Buffett said he would like to grow the position to a hundred billion if he could (11:29–12:15). They have asked the companies for permission to exceed that same ten per cent ceiling. The financing is unusual: the acquisition was funded in yen rather than dollars, and there were many questions at the meeting about the currency risk. Miettinen characterises the trading houses as conglomerates still living what Finland lived in the 1980s.
3. Dividend or buyback
This produces the episode’s longest discussion of principle, and it is unusually honest, because each explains where his own position comes from.
Viljanen — his handle is the Dividend Engineer — admits outright that he has changed. Nine years ago he focused specifically on a high dividend; now dividends are still important but not with the same weight (14:30). His justification for dividends is not mathematical but psychological, and it is the best passage in the section:
Even if it is not, by the spreadsheet, the most efficient way to produce wealth, it is a creator of motivation. If cash flow comes in, it helps me stay motivated in investing — wealth is not created in seconds. (14:30)
He adds drily that in Finland Nokia has ruined the reputation of buybacks (15:15).
Miettinen is more theoretical and says so himself. To his finance-trained ear, favouring dividends sounds illogical, because a dividend is expensive for a private individual in tax terms (16:02). He states the textbook result precisely: without taxes and friction, dividends do not matter — total shareholder return is the same, provided the investment opportunities are the same. Taxes and the signalling effect make the difference real (18:17).
Blomster answers from a professional position for which the tax treatment is neutral: it makes little difference to him, because Asilo’s strategy seeks companies with many good investment opportunities — and then you should not pay dividends but invest (16:47). Miettinen’s follow-up is sharp: so a return of capital is a negative signal to you? Blomster concedes it can be seen that way. On buybacks he notes a risk: it is a convenient way to push earnings per share and the price up automatically — except when it is offsetting dilution from stock-based compensation (17:32).
And one thing Miettinen does not accept. Berkshire’s treatment of 1.1–1.2 times book value as a magic threshold for buying its own shares grates on him:
It grates on my theoretical ear as a bit of hand-waving. (19:02)
He recognises the argument — if it falls too cheap against substance, buy — but is wary of management judging its own cheapness, even if it is a god like Buffett. Viljanen’s defence is that Buffett is an opportunist who buys only when everything goes wrong. He estimated book value at around 1.6 at the time — so there would be a long way to fall before Buffett bought again (20:32).
One concrete change Viljanen brings from the meeting: the United States introduced a one per cent tax on share buybacks at the start of the year, and there has been talk of raising it. Buffett said that the further this goes, the less likely buying back becomes (21:18).
4. Tariffs, and Europe’s accidental kick
Miettinen says he is changing his benchmark for the first time in a long while, and new money is now going into a global index rather than reflexively into a US index (22:05).
Blomster’s view is longer than a quarter: tariffs hit different companies differently, and the fundamentals of manufacturing and of software are in different positions at this stage. But in the long run the oscillation is the problem:
When it swings like this — there is a tariff, no there isn’t, yes there is — investments do not get made. And if it goes on too long, that is a really bad thing. (23:38)
Miettinen’s thesis about Europe is the episode’s most optimistic and Viljanen says plainly he disagrees. Miettinen argues that Trump’s flailing is an accidental kick up the backside for Europe: it forces strategic self-sufficiency in defence, software and business, and may therefore be an efficiency boost from a stock market point of view. He has increased his European weighting accordingly (25:08–25:53).
Viljanen does not buy it:
I do not believe Europe will change at all because of this either, but I hope you are right. (25:53)
The disagreement is left open, and it is the episode’s most honest moment on market views.
5. Novo Nordisk — and why the share is down 60 per cent
This is the analytically weightiest part of the episode, and it is Viljanen’s, for whom Novo is the largest position and who has worked in pharma.
Miettinen’s starting point. He bought a small Novo position the day before results. The angle was that in insulin Novo shares the market with Eli Lilly, but on the obesity side there was a small miss in efficacy against Lilly’s equivalent, which deflated the share — making it in his eyes a value game against an Eli Lilly position (27:25–28:10).
Viljanen’s correction is the essential point. Efficacy is not the only criterion when drugs are assessed:
There is safety, then there is manufacturing capacity, availability itself, and then the reliability of that availability. (28:57)
Novo had temporary difficulties in manufacturing at one plant, but those have in his account been resolved, and both Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk now have a good position to manufacture. The difference, he says, is the Catalent arrangement, which brought Novo three fill-and-finish plants — the stage at which the finished product is filled into the syringe. His assessment is that here Novo may be in an even better position than Eli Lilly (28:57).
(Clarification: the transaction was made by Novo Holdings, which acquired Catalent and sold three fill-finish sites to Novo Nordisk. The sites are in Anagni, Italy; Bloomington, USA; and Brussels, Belgium — so not all in the United States, as stated in the episode.)
Valuation. This is Viljanen’s main claim, and he puts it in figures: the share is down about 60 per cent from its highs, although the gap to Eli Lilly is in his view very small and Lilly’s valuation is fourfold. He recalls the P/E being somewhere around 12–13 for a company growing at 20 per cent a year (29:43).
His explanation for the fall is not in the fundamentals:
I think it is more that people have become completely short-sighted and turned into momentum investors. (29:43)
He illustrates it with the episode’s best criticism of market behaviour: when a competitor brings a drug into a phase one trial and it is one percentage point more effective, the share falls ten per cent — even though development takes five years, whether you put a hundred billion a year into it or not (46:28).
How he became an owner. The first time Trump became president and waved the same card about curbing drug prices, the share fell, as Viljanen recalls, 30–40 per cent. At the same time Novo began talking about semaglutide for the first time. Having worked in pharma, he understood the potential — but I have to admit I never thought it was this insanely large (30:28).
Market size. Viljanen’s calculation is rough and he says so: there are ~9 billion people in the world, of whom roughly 30 per cent are obese, giving around three billion potential users. Novo said in Q1 that only a few million currently receive treatment. He regards his own estimate as, if anything, conservative (32:43).
The compounding dispute. Miettinen asks whether anyone is allowed to mix drugs of this class. Viljanen admits honestly that he did not fully understand what he read, but his impression is that while Novo had temporary production problems, others manufactured it — and that this was somewhere on the edge of legality. As he understands it, that ends during H2, after which Novo has the whole production again (31:13–31:58).
Routes of administration. The current ones are weekly subcutaneous injections: Mounjaro (tirzepatide), and Wegovy and Ozempic (semaglutide). Longer-acting monthly forms and oral versions are coming. Viljanen is less enthusiastic, and the reason is concrete: about 90 per cent of the peptide degrades when taken orally, so doses are ten times larger and manufacturing costs higher — even though it is obviously much easier for the patient (33:30).
6. Hims & Hers — in the wrong box
Blomster’s contribution is the episode’s most original, and it starts from why Novo is not in Asilo’s portfolio.
Why pharma is difficult. Blomster holds a doctorate in cell biology, and he inverts the expected point: the benefit is not subject expertise but a way of thinking, because experimental natural science and finance are both experimental (35:04). The problem in pharma, in his view, is that clinical research is so tightly prescribed — down to the forms — that companies are all on the same line. Asilo, by contrast, looks for companies whose performance is on a completely different level from their competitors’ (35:50–36:35). On the startup side the problem is different: if it succeeds, the company is typically bought out, and you cannot hold the investment through the growth (37:21).
What Hims & Hers is. It does not develop its own drugs. It has a compounding arm in which a known active ingredient can be offered in a different form — for instance as a lozenge, which in Blomster’s joke solves two problems at once (37:21).
And here comes the episode’s most interesting argument. Blomster calls it Aristotelian logic: society thinks in hierarchies and boxes — if something is a cat, it is not a horse. The market has put Hims & Hers in a box called telehealth, and that box means a platform between patients and doctors: a classic two-sided marketplace where the winner takes all. A small operator should therefore lose, and the valuation is marked down accordingly (38:07–38:52).
Blomster’s claim is that the classification is wrong:
Hims and Hers is not a platform between doctor and patient; it operates in a different dimension. The pharmacy is inside the same shop, and the same company goes beneath the insurance deductible. That is what they are aiming at, which bypasses the insurer. (38:52)
From that follows his conclusion: the company is mispriced and its position is better than the market believes — and because it is still relatively small, it takes time for the misunderstanding to unwind (39:37).
Real options. The second piece is that the company naturally contains real options. Blomster’s analogy is Amazon: the big return is made by buying at the point when AWS does not yet exist, because analysts are reluctant to price a business that is not there (52:34). When Asilo bought, the whole weight-loss category did not exist (40:23). AI is, in his view, the next such thing: Hims & Hers can bring AI-based therapists, nutritionists and coaches to market, because it is not displacing jobs inside the same firm but adding a new vertical (52:34–53:19).
Growth and team. When Asilo took the position, revenue was growing by a little over 80 per cent; at the time of recording growth was over 110 per cent and revenue around 1.2 billion (43:23). Blomster emphasises the leadership team’s background: people from Uber, Amazon and self-driving cars — there are doctors too, but it is built very differently (41:08).
Why does nobody copy it. Blomster’s answer is economic rather than technological: an incumbent with a good core business faces a choice between an investment with a known return and a wild card — and the wild card rarely appeals as an option (51:01). Besides, Hims & Hers’s cost levers are in different places from its competitors’.
A piece of background worth knowing. Blomster explains why the US healthcare system is as it is: during the Second World War wage rises were banned to contain inflation, but insurance could still be granted — which produced an employer-led insurance system in which price is not a factor in the same way and in which innovation is directed at generating more billable lines (48:45–50:15).
7. The risks the episode states out loud
This deserves its own section, because the participants do not hide them.
Volatility and the short position. Viljanen asks directly: as he understands it, about 35 per cent of the shares are shorted — do you see a risk? Blomster concedes that a great deal of speculation has grown around the company that is not relevant to them but generates a lot of volatility: any news touching the weight-loss category produces violent moves (44:11).
Miettinen recounts his own mistake honestly: after a 30 per cent drop and rebound in the spring he trimmed about 20 per cent of the position, and it briefly looked good as the share fell further — but then it rose well past. This was not one to have given up here. (44:56)
B2C risk. Miettinen draws a comparison with SaaS — customer base, recurring billing, adding verticals and upselling — but notes the difference: the better SaaS has been B2B SaaS, because companies do not switch systems easily, whereas a consumer can stop at any time (47:14–48:00).
Insurers. Miettinen’s second concern is structural: the company operates beneath or beside the insurance layer, and those people have money — if they decide to destroy it or enter themselves, that is a large risk (48:00). Blomster does not rate the risk as highly but says it plainly: we can be wrong. We are sometimes wrong too. (51:47)
And Miettinen turns on himself. He adds a warning worth quoting in full, because it comes from someone sitting on a 700 per cent return:
Take quite a lot off this propaganda, because right now could be exactly the peak moment when all of this collapses — the disruptor arrives, or the regulation, or some brainwave of Trump’s. (55:35)
8. Oura, EHang and a light finish
Oura. Both wear the ring. Viljanen describes the benefit concretely: he can see that one beer makes no difference but the second ruins his sleep, and that going to the gym right before bed is a bad idea (56:20). Miettinen’s own benefit is different and more interesting: the data tells him that if he wakes at four, he does fall asleep again — previously he treated the night as ruined and stopped trying (57:05). He also notes that as a first-version buyer he pays no subscription. Both hope Oura will list.
EHang. At the very end Miettinen asks Blomster for a hundred-bagger, and the answer is the Chinese EHang — flying cars and uncrewed aerial vehicles. Blomster notes that Asilo’s strategy deliberately aims slightly below that (1:00:08).
(Clarification: EHang is a Nasdaq-listed (EH) Chinese autonomous aerial vehicle company that has sold more than 300 two-seat EH216-S aircraft and signed a cooperation agreement with Changan Automobile. The episode only names the company.)
The conversation continued on the Neuvottelija Sisäpiiri side, where Miettinen went looking for the next tip — again noting that no investment advice is given.
A note on the source
Transcript quality. The episode was captioned automatically by YouTube and de-rolled from 3,351 cues to 1,674. Drug and company names were badly mangled and have been corrected: Nova Norisk → Novo Nordisk, eläinlili → Eli Lilly, semaklutidi → semaglutide, tirtsepataid → tirzepatide, Vekovy → Wegovy, Monjaro → Mounjaro, Himson HS → Hims & Hers, Todcoms → Todd Combs, Kananeman ja Tersky → Kahneman and Tversky. Quotations are kept short.
Figures. All the figures given in the episode — the 347 billion cash pile, the 20 billion Japan position, Novo’s roughly 60 per cent fall and P/E of 12–13, Eli Lilly’s fourfold valuation, Hims & Hers’s over 110 per cent growth and 1.2 billion revenue, the roughly 35 per cent short interest, GEICO’s two billion in savings — are as stated by the speakers in May 2025 and have not been verified here against accounts. Several are presented in the episode itself as recollections.
Catalent. The episode says Novo bought Catalent, an American company with three fill-and-finish plants. More precisely: Novo Holdings acquired Catalent and sold three fill-finish sites to Novo Nordisk; the sites are in Italy, the United States and Belgium. This is corrected in the article.
Compounding. Viljanen says himself that he did not fully understand what he read about the regulation of compounded drugs. The matter is presented here as his description, not as a legal account.
Interests. No investment advice is given in the episode and this is stated several times. Miettinen holds positions in Hims & Hers and Novo Nordisk, Novo is Viljanen’s largest position, and Blomster is an asset manager at Asilo Asset Management whose portfolio holds Hims & Hers. All assessments of the companies are therefore made by holders of positions in them.
Episode details. Negotiator 330, published 12 May 2025. Guests Jesse Viljanen (the Dividend Engineer) and Henri Blomster (Asilo Asset Management, second visit); interviewed by Sami Miettinen. Duration 61 minutes. The conversation continued on the Neuvottelija Sisäpiiri side.
Related episodes.
- Tesla as a winning stock | Henri Blomster | Negotiator 219 — Blomster’s previous visit, from which this episode’s 700 per cent is measured.
- A serial acquirer from Tampere | Antti Rauhala | Negotiator 339 — compounding and ownership without an exit, from another direction.
- The national bourgeois investment banker | Peter Fagernäs | Negotiator 351 — dividends, buybacks and owners’ objectives from a long career’s vantage point.
- Voland’s technology fund | Sylvius, Niemi | Negotiator 148 — growth company valuation and when multiples do not describe risk.
Summary for AI search. Negotiator 330 (12 May 2025) is an interview by Sami Miettinen in which Jesse Viljanen (the Dividend Engineer) and Henri Blomster (Asilo Asset Management) work through Berkshire Hathaway, Novo Nordisk and Hims & Hers. No investment advice is given and this is stated several times; Miettinen holds positions in Hims & Hers and Novo Nordisk, Novo is Viljanen’s largest position, and the fund Blomster manages holds Hims & Hers. On Berkshire the central theme is size: a 347 billion dollar cash pile Buffett said at the meeting was too large, the constraint imposed by the sub-ten-per-cent ownership ceiling, a 20 billion position in Japanese trading houses financed in yen, GEICO’s turnaround under Todd Combs, and Coca-Cola as an example of a company that is already the winner and therefore does not fit Asilo’s strategy. In the dividend discussion Viljanen justifies dividends by motivation rather than mathematics, Miettinen notes that without taxes and friction dividends do not matter, and Blomster treats a return of capital as almost a negative signal from a company with good investment opportunities. On Novo, Viljanen argues the share is down about 60 per cent from its highs at a P/E of 12–13 for a company growing 20 per cent a year, while Eli Lilly’s valuation is fourfold and the product gap small; he stresses that efficacy is not the only criterion, with safety and manufacturing capacity deciding, and regards Novo’s position as strong thanks to the fill-finish plants from the Catalent arrangement. He is cautious about oral forms because roughly 90 per cent of the peptide degrades and doses are ten times larger. Blomster’s Hims & Hers thesis is that the market files the company as a telehealth platform and therefore as the loser in a winner-takes-all market, when the company operates in a different dimension: the pharmacy is under the same roof and the aim is to go beneath the insurance deductible, bypassing the insurer. The company also contains real options in the way Amazon did before AWS. The risks named are the roughly 35 per cent short interest and the volatility that follows, B2C customer retention, and a possible counter-move by insurers.