I'm taking Hims & Hers Health off of my 'Stinky Six' list; 51 ambulances delivered to Ukraine
I added telehealth company Hims & Hers Health (HIMS) to my "Stinky Six" list of stocks to avoid on October 29, warning:
The company's growth is driven by aggressively prescribing drugs for weight loss, hair loss, anxiety, depression, etc., after a brief phone consult. Its management and advertising are highly promotional. And at yesterday's close of $47.12, the company has a $10.7 billion market cap, and the stock trades at a nosebleed 81 times this year's earnings.
Since then, the stock has crashed by 50%.
But that's not the main reason I'm removing it from my list today... This is:
Believe it or not, these two pictures are of the same person.
On the left is Trevor Larcom when he was a child actor. At 18 years old, he weighed 300 pounds. Four years later, as you can see on the right, he's down to 170 pounds with a ripped physique.
How did he transform himself? With peptides...
As this Wall Street Journal article explains, these injectable drugs haven't gone through Food and Drug Administration ("FDA") approval. But Larcom and many others order them through an online gray market:
And after seeing numerous before-and-after transformations, he ordered a peptide "stack," or a combination of several peptides for supposed enhanced results...
Larcom, who lives in Melbourne, [Florida], ordered a three week's supply of Klow, a mixture of the peptides GHK-Cu, BPC157, TB500 and KPV, for $65. The peptides were restricted under the Biden-era FDA, but the Trump administration has recently sought to make it legal for compounding pharmacies to produce them. Larcom has been taking it on and off for more than seven months.
He said he quickly noticed a difference in his recovery in the gym and a reduction in soreness. His skin quality has improved. He subsequently added other peptides to his "stack": Melanotan II, or MT-II (known as the "tanning peptide," changing the tint of skin because it boosts melanin production) and Semax, a synthetic nootropic peptide.
To be clear, what Larcom is doing – injecting himself with a wide range of unapproved substances – is a dangerous and terrible idea.
But do I think millions of people will look at these before-and-after pictures and rush to pay any amount of money, irrespective of the risk, to achieve that kind of transformation?
Absolutely!
And as the WSJ article notes, the Trump administration isn't going to stand in the way – and it may even facilitate legal production of these compounds.
I've been doing a lot of research on peptides, and I think this boom is just getting started...
For example, GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are peptides (that's what the "P" stands for – glucagon-like peptide-1). Insulin is a peptide as well.
These two articles highlight how peptides have been taking off recently:
- January 27: Peptides Are the New Wellness Cure-All, New York magazine
- April 6: Why Are People Injecting Themselves With Peptides, The New Yorker
And Hims & Hers Health is rushing to monetize this massive potential market...
According to this Washington Post article, the company's co-founder and CEO, Andrew Dudum, profited from the GLP-1 drug wave and suffered the subsequent crackdown. And he's now "ready to pivot again" – to peptides:
The Hims & Hers factory in Menlo Park, California, is serving as a research and development lab for peptides – promoted by bodybuilders and longevity buffs – as the Trump administration weighs loosening sale restrictions on the drugs, short chains of amino acids that come in multiple forms.
Many peptides are sourced in China and sold on an internet gray market, with only limited evidence of their safety or effectiveness. But there's rising consumer interest in the United States, and Dudum said he plans to take them mainstream by sourcing them domestically and deploying the extensive Hims & Hers marketing machinery to stoke demand.
If the FDA allows U.S. practitioners to prescribe peptides, it stands to become a major part of the company's shift to wellness, along with other popular but controversial offerings: biological age analysis through blood tests and full-body scans.
HIMS soared nearly 500% from May 2024 to July 2025, during the GLP-1 wave:
This wasn't just a meme-stock phenomenon. Revenues tripled, and profitability surged:
Then the FDA started cracking down on compounding pharmacies like Hims & Hers, and Novo Nordisk (NVO) filed a lawsuit against the company over drug-patent infringement. As a result, revenue flatlined and profitability crashed – as did the stock.
But Hims & Hers may catch another big wave with peptides, which could send the stock skyrocketing... So I'm taking it off of my list of stocks to avoid.
Best regards,
Whitney
P.S. I welcome your feedback – send me an e-mail by clicking here.
P.P.S. Kyiv, Ukraine was hit with the worst Russian drone and missile barrage of the war on Saturday night (article here and video here).
But did this deter my parents and the rest of the Ukraine Focus team from driving dozens of ambulances four hours from Rivne to the country's capital on Sunday? HECK NO!
They – and the Ukrainian people – will not be intimidated by Russia's tactics. In fact, they only increase their determination to fight for Ukraine's freedom.
My parents are doing great, spending three days touring Kyiv, and will be back home in Nairobi, Kenya on Friday. I've given them a new name: Instead of the Kenyan honey badgers, they're now the Ukrainian honey badgers!
They and 60 other American volunteers handed over 51 ambulances to Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces yesterday in a beautiful ceremony at the Mother Ukraine statue in Kyiv (video here). It was attended by the former President of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, Petro Poroshenko (in all blue in the top left photo below):
My parents also visited Maidan (Independence) Square, which you can see in the top right photo. And here they are after the ceremony:
