Welcome to Thoughts on the Market.

I'm Simeon Gutman, Morgan Stanley's Hardline, Broadline, and Food Retail Analyst.

Along with my colleagues bringing you a variety of perspectives, I'll be talking about pets

and why pets could be a long-tailed investment trend.

It's Thursday, April 15th at 11 a.m. in New York.

Before we discuss Bella, Luna, and Charlie, top three most popular dog names in 2020 in

case you didn't know, you may also be wondering what I mean by Hardline, Broadline, and Food

Retail.

I'm an analyst of retail stores.

I follow Big Box retail stores including grocery stores, which covers the food retail part

of the title.

Broadline simply means a store that carries multiple product categories or a broad set

of goods.

On the other hand, Hardline refers to a durable good and a narrow product line, for example,

sporting goods stores, electronic stores, and relevant for this podcast pet stores.

My coverage area spans a large part of consumer spending and the stores you shop at almost

every single week.

With that, I'd like to invite you into the Petriarchy, aka the PetCare Industry, which was

already a big and steady sector pre-pandemic, and has now emerged as one of the fastest growing

sectors going forward, arguably a megatrend.

And given the recurring nature of pets, it should create a lot of future value.

The PetCare Industry was a nearly 120 billion dollar industry pre-COVID, and we expect it

...