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Doug Baker

Chief Strategy Officer at SHIFT Active Media; cycling market research and strategy expert specializing in rider data and industry insights.

Aug 4, 2026

8:37
So, uh, uh, in your view, what are the implications of, of these trends from these two important regulated industry sectors?
8:46
Yeah, absolutely.
8:47
So, you know, I would say that had somebody told me we were going to have that much supply out of the utility space, and obviously a lot of that is driven by, you know, the, the AI narrative and, and the utilities needing to expand or enhance existing infrastructure.
9:07
I would've been concerned about the impact on spreads, on valuations with that supply.
9:14
But what we've found is that with those hybrid securities, so these utilities are typically issuing dated maturity hybrid structures, which are different than the perpetuals issued, uh, by banks.
9:28
Those securities, uh, are typically, the, the utility-issued securities are typically index eligible as well for either investment-grade bond indices and/or high-yield bond indices, not just preferred indices.
9:42
So the investor base has been broad, it's been deep, um, and this is also going to be typically, um, a, a segment within those areas that are higher yielding compared to the rest of the index on average.

10 MINS LATER

19:40
Uh, so what are the takeaways from that?
13:51
cycling but just don't have as much time to go go as far or go as often
13:54
so again i think gravel overall steadily growing as along with that i think the bikepacking is seeing seeing some interest and there is definitely some cultural overlap with the general sort of like like greater embrace of time outdoors from younger audiences than we would have seen would have seen previously Your point about the speed of like taking up new hobbies though is really interesting.
14:15
And I actually think that's not necessarily a cycling thing.
14:17
That's, that's a digital media thing.
14:20
Okay.
14:21
If I wanted to get, if I wanted to get into cycling or into a specific subgroup, something is, if I was getting into Audax, it's like decades ago.
14:28
I'd have to like join a club, find this slightly sort of like fringe group in society, go and see what they're doing, see if they'll let me in.

7 MINS LATER

21:07
And is it because it is changing so fast? Or is it just, again, is it just my perception? Or as a category, where is it? What is it? Well,

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