Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg business Week, Daily reporting from the magazine
Speaker 2: that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies,
Speaker 2: and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business finance
Speaker 2: and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 2: Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: We have a great guest, someone we turn too often
Speaker 3: when it comes to some of the big issues that
Speaker 3: are facing global relationships. Back with us, as Ed Price.
Speaker 3: He's a former British trade official. He's now nonresident Senior
Speaker 3: Fellow at New York University's advised members of the European
Speaker 3: and British parliaments. He's a former British trade official, and
Speaker 3: he writes often about politics, economic policy, and so much more.
Speaker 3: And he joins us now from upstate New York. Good
Speaker 3: to have you here. How are you?
Speaker 4: I'm well, Carol, thanks again for having me.
Speaker 3: How are you doing well? Trying to keep up and
Speaker 3: certainly taking our cues out of the White House and
Speaker 3: specifically just moments ago from the Oval Office. Let's start
Speaker 3: with I think what is top of mind? And it
Speaker 3: seemed to be top of mind for the discussion between
Speaker 3: the Prime Minister of Norway and President Trump just moments ago,
Speaker 3: and that is Russia Ukraine. US is expected to demand
Speaker 3: that Russia accept Ukraine's right to have its own army
Speaker 3: defense industry as part of a peace agreement between Moscow
Speaker 3: and Kiev. And Kiev, how do you see these developments
Speaker 3: and where it might be going and in what might
Speaker 3: bring this to an end, if anytime soon?
Speaker 4: Sure, So I'm very puzzled about the situation in Ukraine, honestly,
Speaker 4: because it seems to me from the outside that Putin
Speaker 4: has been slowly losing this war, and slowly losing this war,
Speaker 4: at least against his initial ambitions, which as we know,
Speaker 4: included the seizure of all of Ukraine and the installation
Speaker 4: of a puppet government. And so you go away and
Speaker 4: read about this, ask people that better informed than I,
Speaker 4: maybe who travel more frequently over there. They'll tell you
Speaker 4: that Putin is doing pretty poorly and that the Russian
Speaker 4: economy is not in the sort of place that could
Speaker 4: continue this war for long. And so when I see
Speaker 4: President Trump announce that he's going to come up with
Speaker 4: a deal, I don't understand why he doesn't push forward
Speaker 4: with more weapons and more supplies to Ukraine in order
Speaker 4: to push that deal forward, whatever it is. So it's
Speaker 4: very confusing because on the one hand, Trump seems to
Speaker 4: offer carrots to Putin, carrots that Putin hasn't asked for
Speaker 4: while withdrawing the stick. I haven't actually read the art
Speaker 4: of the deal. That might be how you're supposed to
Speaker 4: do it, but I'm not sure well, and.
Speaker 5: It does to be fair to the president, something that
Speaker 5: he has been consistent about is the disdain that he
Speaker 5: has for the loss of life, and it's something that
Speaker 5: he mentioned several times today talking about the thousands of
Speaker 5: young people who continue to die in Ukraine each and
Speaker 5: every week as a result of this war. Could it
Speaker 5: be in your view that he just wants to end
Speaker 5: the fighting.
Speaker 4: He may want to end the fighting, but I'm not
Speaker 4: sure that the same man who threatens Greenland, Panama and
Speaker 4: Canada with possible military action truly cares about the loss
Speaker 4: of life. So I would put that down to a
Speaker 4: nice talking point that he does well to repeat because
Speaker 4: it's a powerful one, and I should be careful myself
Speaker 4: as an analyst not to enjoy or celebrate wars, and
Speaker 4: we talk about this one in Ukraine very often. It
Speaker 4: is indeed tragic. Now that might be cynicism. I don't
Speaker 4: look at President Trump at his entire policy agenda, his
Speaker 4: entire foreign policy agenda, and think this is someone who
Speaker 4: cares about lives. Need I remind the people watching or
Speaker 4: listening to this live stream that we've also been sending
Speaker 4: people without due process to El Salvador. So I would
Speaker 4: certainly take President Trump's concern for human rights or the
Speaker 4: loss of life with a pinch of salt.
Speaker 3: The other thing is that the President has certainly talked
Speaker 3: a lot about and to be fair, it's and is
Speaker 3: maybe his quest and his mission to make sure that
Speaker 3: the US has what it needs for national security. And
Speaker 3: I think it's safe to say that a lot of
Speaker 3: nations are thinking about this at this point. He talked
Speaker 3: about Greenland important for international peace. You've been traveling ed.
Speaker 3: You've been not necessarily to Greenland anytime soon, but you
Speaker 3: have been to Panama, You've been to Canada. I am
Speaker 3: curious what you've been hearing seeing when it comes to
Speaker 3: maybe a new global order.
Speaker 4: Well, if there's a Bloomberg challenge for me to go
Speaker 4: to Greenland. I accept, and I'll put back. We'll work
Speaker 4: on it. Canada and Panama are in the same mood,
Speaker 4: and when an American citizen turns up and says, look,
Speaker 4: what do you think? The answer is not much. Both
Speaker 4: of those countries are very upset with the idea that
Speaker 4: the United States, the apparent champion of liberty and it's
Speaker 4: two hundred and forty nine year history, would be threatening
Speaker 4: the annexation of allies. It's completely bizarre, and it's also
Speaker 4: something that I think is causing quite a lot of stress.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 4: The Canadians and the people in Panama were very polite
Speaker 4: to me. That might be because they were misled by
Speaker 4: my accent and they, you know, they thought I was British.
Speaker 4: But as soon as I said, look, I'm actually American
Speaker 4: in a hotel lobby or even at the checkpoint, there
Speaker 4: were raised eyebrows. So we always talk about whether Trump
Speaker 4: is serious in his foreign policy script. I don't know
Speaker 4: if he is or not. I think is, but other
Speaker 4: people abroad do.
Speaker 5: Do you think there's a legitimate argument for the United
Speaker 5: States to want to annex Greenland?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 7: I from a security perspective, ed, No.
Speaker 4: It's completely insane. Because whatever the gain in annex in Greenland,
Speaker 4: there would be a loss in the EU as an ally.
Speaker 4: And you know, you could never fully sit down with
Speaker 4: the eyes and ears of God and calculate what that
Speaker 4: net calculation would be. But I'm pretty sure you could
Speaker 4: take a rough estimate and say, okay, we expand our
Speaker 4: presence in Greenland, we formally change the deed, we say
Speaker 4: we own it, and we put a few more troops
Speaker 4: in there. Just imagine how annoyed and disgusted Denmark, France
Speaker 4: and other EU countries would be with US. I mean
Speaker 4: they could turn around and say, well, look, if the
Speaker 4: United States is actually willing to cross frontiers and take
Speaker 4: land that doesn't belong to them, maybe a deal with Beijing,
Speaker 4: which to be fair to the Chinese, you know they
Speaker 4: haven't actually done that. Maybe a deal with China is
Speaker 4: in our interests long term. So I think it's there's
Speaker 4: absolutely no argument for it when you sit down and
Speaker 4: do the next calculation. If you have a simple view
Speaker 4: of the world and you think this is mine, that's theirs,
Speaker 4: then you of course, like we said before, you can
Speaker 4: draw a sharpie around an area and say it's mine.
Speaker 4: But I don't think that that's taking into account the
Speaker 4: second order effect of losing the Europeans.
Speaker 5: Well, just a reminder of what the President said last
Speaker 5: month in an address to Congress, quote, we need Greenland
Speaker 5: for national security and even international security, and we're working
Speaker 5: with everybody involved to try to get it. One way
Speaker 5: or the other, We're going to get it.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: One of the things I think about ED two as
Speaker 3: we are watching kind of the back and forth between
Speaker 3: world leaders, I guess what I'm most obsessed with is
Speaker 3: US and China, just because they are the two big
Speaker 3: economies and determine and control. I think it's safe to
Speaker 3: say so much. Having said that, what is you know,
Speaker 3: the strategic balance as China is not that China. It
Speaker 3: was five years ago or ten years ago that maybe
Speaker 3: needed an a SIST or twenty years ago, right when
Speaker 3: so many different global companies set up shop there. We've
Speaker 3: been talking a lot about the EV market and BYD
Speaker 3: and the advancements that China has made technologically in this world.
Speaker 3: And they have done this largely by supporting so many
Speaker 3: of their industries and helping them develop. So I do wonder.
Speaker 3: We had the Whirlpool CEO on yesterday, who manufactures about
Speaker 3: eighty percent here in the United States. Eighty percent of
Speaker 3: their supply chain is here, and is someone I would
Speaker 3: say safe to say supportive of some of the terraff
Speaker 3: pushback to help him develop his domestics.
Speaker 5: He's already got the domestic production, so he's in a
Speaker 5: good position.
Speaker 3: It's in a good position. So what is like as
Speaker 3: you talk to world leaders as you travel you know
Speaker 3: some of the argument many would say that Trump has
Speaker 3: makes some sense in terms of developing some industries here,
Speaker 3: protecting our national security. What is the balance for any
Speaker 3: nation US, China or the Europe region to have that
Speaker 3: and yet kind of get along on a global basis,
Speaker 3: which is necessary for things like climate change, the environment,
Speaker 3: and so much more.
Speaker 4: Well, let's go through the exercise, Carol, and let's be
Speaker 4: fair to President Trump. I think that he deserves an
Speaker 4: A plus on his report cards for identifying global problems.
Speaker 4: This is the man that's identified that the Breton Woods
Speaker 4: trade imbalance, that is that other countries have a higher
Speaker 4: tariff rate than the US. He's the man that identified
Speaker 4: that that's out of date, and he joined the dots
Speaker 4: between that and an unsustainable fiscal position in the United States.
Speaker 4: He's also right to be fair to the president to
Speaker 4: point out that great power politics and great power behavior
Speaker 4: is a feature, not a of history, and that the
Speaker 4: United States should be ready at some point in the
Speaker 4: twenty first century for conflict. So the president, from you know,
Speaker 4: some analyst like me, gets an A plus on identifying
Speaker 4: the problems. Where we run into trouble is the execution
Speaker 4: and the suggestion that Donald Trump, alone, in his sort
Speaker 4: of chaotic ad hoc behavior, is helpfully moving the United States,
Speaker 4: its allies, and the world back into a new, more
Speaker 4: helpful equilibrium. So I don't think that that's what he's doing. Yes,
Speaker 4: the United States cannot continue to borrow the way it's
Speaker 4: borrowing and subsidize the world's security. But the way to
Speaker 4: fix that is to keep our allies closer, is to
Speaker 4: do trade deals with the people that like us, and
Speaker 4: maybe even reduce tariffs with them. So he has to
Speaker 4: get what A D A D minus. You know, I
Speaker 4: don't want to fail the guy out right, because he's
Speaker 4: the President of the United States and his success is
Speaker 4: everybody's success. But this sort of right, this chaotic approach
Speaker 4: to things, is not going to bring the world into
Speaker 4: so far as I can see, any new equilibrium, despite
Speaker 4: what Scott Besson and Marco Rubio tried to do. After
Speaker 4: Trump has spoken which is toned up in the press
Speaker 4: and say actually this is what he really meant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's why folks like David Brooks of The New
Speaker 3: York Times has said, you know, the President is maybe
Speaker 3: the wrong answer to the right question, because I think
Speaker 3: many would say, whether it's tariffs or geopolitics or positions
Speaker 3: in the world, that he's brought up a lot of
Speaker 3: issues that need to be dealt with and discussed ed.
Speaker 3: We apologize things have gotten a little hectic today and
Speaker 3: obviously we had to listen to President Trump there at
Speaker 3: the White House. But we hope we can get you
Speaker 3: back real soon. Really appreciate you weighing it. Ed Price
Speaker 3: always timely, senior fellow at NY You non resident senior fellow,
Speaker 3: former British trade official, joining us once again here on Bloomberg.
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Speaker 3: All right, folks, we've been watching some of the airlines.
Speaker 3: I feel like we've been watching them for a few
Speaker 3: weeks at this point. But we did have American come
Speaker 3: out withdrawing its full year earnings out look, joining a
Speaker 3: growing number of companies that say unease about the US economies,
Speaker 3: making it difficult to forecast how the year will play at.
Speaker 3: You also had Alaska Air saying second quarter earnings will
Speaker 3: come in below Wall Street estimates, and then Southwest Air
Speaker 3: raining and growth this year as volatility surrounding US trade
Speaker 3: policy is chilling out consumer demand on air travel. I'm
Speaker 3: just hoping fares come down. But we are watching this sector.
Speaker 3: We've got a great voice to talk about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's great to add back with someone who knows
Speaker 5: the industry so well. Sheila Kaiaalu's here. She's managing director
Speaker 5: and equity research at Jeffrey. She joins us here in
Speaker 5: the studio. How bad is it for airlines right now?
Speaker 1: It seems like it's stabilizing. It was pretty bad a
Speaker 1: month ago, and it.
Speaker 7: Was when we yea heard from Delta with drawing.
Speaker 1: Yes, Delta with drawing. We downgraded the sector to half
Speaker 1: cell ratings and underperform ratings. But that news the sort
Speaker 1: of price.
Speaker 8: Dan.
Speaker 1: That's why you're seeing American and Southwest kind of tread
Speaker 1: water today because we've seen this tape before with domestic
Speaker 1: leisure really being the soft spot off peak hours Tuesday Wednesday,
Speaker 1: Blying really not getting passenger demand. Southwest putting up seventy
Speaker 1: three percent load factors. That means the plane is about
Speaker 1: three forts full, should be eighty two to eighty five
Speaker 1: percent full. So we've seen that that's where the maronment that's.
Speaker 3: More than three percent. I was kind of shocked when
Speaker 3: I went to look at what the price was. I thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: it's going to be selling off. But you're saying most
Speaker 3: of that stuff is it's starting.
Speaker 1: To get its chriced in because we've heard it now
Speaker 1: for a month and it seems like the consumers able
Speaker 1: to hold stable. But we also have a pause on tariff,
Speaker 1: so let's see how that works itself out. We heard
Speaker 1: from Boeing this week, we heard from General Electric and Raytheon.
Speaker 1: These are aftermarket suppliers on engines, et cetera, and so
Speaker 1: what they're doing is they're cutting their departure forecast from
Speaker 1: mid single digit to low single digit. That means the
Speaker 1: numbers of planes that are taking off, but that's based
Speaker 1: on what's already happened with Delta and United cutting capacity
Speaker 1: and even Southwest cutting mildly, and they're not really seeing
Speaker 1: further weakness internationally. That's what we're hearing. That the market's
Speaker 1: holding stable over the last six to eight weeks from
Speaker 1: the fall off we saw starting March first.
Speaker 7: So how's business travel?
Speaker 1: Corporate travel seems like it's okay, but it depends on
Speaker 1: the sector in the airline. You know, Southwest was a
Speaker 1: little bit more robust. American has a very idiosyncratic story
Speaker 1: because they removed their corporate booking channels last year, so
Speaker 1: they have a super easy comp United and Delta called
Speaker 1: out weakness obviously across government customers and certain manufacturing markets
Speaker 1: like autos and even aerospace where they saw softness, but
Speaker 1: financials tech was still holding up.
Speaker 3: So we'll see not a great reveal, but we've got
Speaker 3: like two, three, four trips going out to the West
Speaker 3: Coast in like the next month or so.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and we've booked zero tickets at this point. That's
Speaker 5: fun to do.
Speaker 3: I have one booked, I have one book So what
Speaker 3: are the airlines doing in terms of pricing? I know,
Speaker 3: somebody else who was looking for a flight and saying, well,
Speaker 3: wait are there's some softness and it was so expensive.
Speaker 3: I think you go to Puerto Rico or something like
Speaker 3: a hearing in terms of pricing.
Speaker 1: Well, I haven't checked out Puerto Rico flights. I wish
Speaker 1: I would, but I met it's a Brazil and Paris
Speaker 1: and a Dallas trip coming up, and none of them
Speaker 1: are book yet. You know, folks post pandemic are booking
Speaker 1: closer in and so you don't have flights book neither
Speaker 1: do I. We haven't seen that price. I haven't seen
Speaker 1: the pricing softness. No, but the airlines are calling it out,
Speaker 1: especially in that domestic leisure market. So if we were
Speaker 1: going to Florida and May, we'd probably get a discount
Speaker 1: a ticket, or you know, Southwest called out that route
Speaker 1: from Tucson to Albany. I'd like to know the guy
Speaker 1: doing that route.
Speaker 3: But that's where they're seeing that weakness. I love you
Speaker 3: and Tucson in Albany that we're just going to say, yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I do wonder about just really what's happening when
Speaker 5: you think about demand from the perspective of international travel.
Speaker 5: You said that it's kind of holding up. But at
Speaker 5: the same time, we're hearing reports that travelers coming to
Speaker 5: the US from outside of the US are holding off,
Speaker 5: and we're seeing that fall a little bit. Is that
Speaker 5: showing up yet in results or in bookings, especially for
Speaker 5: the summer?
Speaker 1: It seemed like for now international still holding up, especially
Speaker 1: with europe strength there. We heard some rumblings about Canadian weakness.
Speaker 1: Folks have sort of put an end to that, saying
Speaker 1: it's only down ten percent, not the significant numbers we've seen.
Speaker 1: So ten percent is something, it's significant, but we were
Speaker 1: seeing numbers in the realm of seventy percent, so the
Speaker 1: ten percent definitely scaled it back. So Canada is an
Speaker 1: area we've heard weakness. We saw some European airlines call
Speaker 1: out weakness coming into the US versus US originated flights
Speaker 1: to Europe are still holding out pretty well, which is interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm kind of surprised because I do feel like
Speaker 3: there's some headlines on stories that are like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: nobody's coming in, you know, traveling to the US and
Speaker 3: or you know, even traveling elsewhere. Can we talk a
Speaker 3: little bit about Boeing, Sure, tell me you're thinking, you know,
Speaker 3: you cover the company. They've reported first quarter results exceeded
Speaker 3: Wall Street estimates. You know they've done a deal, right,
Speaker 3: getting rid of their flight navigation unity. What's how are
Speaker 3: you thinking about next six twelve months for Boeing or
Speaker 3: even longer term.
Speaker 1: I love Boeing when folks get negative, so the days
Speaker 1: when it hits one forty, when we hear about people
Speaker 1: canceling airplanes or thoughts of that. But you know, Kelly Orper,
Speaker 1: yesterday the Bowing CEO said there's no change in the skyline.
Speaker 1: Folks are waiting six years for the aircraft. They've been
Speaker 1: waiting since twenty nineteen. Right Southwest is still waiting. We're
Speaker 1: all waiting for airplanes to be delivered. No one's moving
Speaker 1: out of line. The only customer who is is China.
Speaker 3: But they've been reducing for a while.
Speaker 1: China's been reducing. They've been about twenty percent of deliveries.
Speaker 1: They're actually only five to seven percent of the official backlog,
Speaker 1: but Chinese operators use undisclosed, So yesterday we know that
Speaker 1: it's about fifteen percent of deliveries this year. In the
Speaker 1: first quarter, Boeing delivered eighteen aircraft to China. They expect
Speaker 1: another fifty for the full year, and our estimates are
Speaker 1: around four hundred and seventy five. So China is a
Speaker 1: risk and probably why Boeing didn't sound a little bit
Speaker 1: more bullish. But they seem like things are working well
Speaker 1: with the ramp on the three seven and all the
Speaker 1: rest of the skyline.
Speaker 5: The President sending a message on his social media platform
Speaker 5: this morning about Boeing, saying, quote, Boeing should default China
Speaker 5: for not taking the beautifully finished planes that China committed
Speaker 5: to purchase. This is just a small example of what
Speaker 5: China has done to the USA for years, the Washington
Speaker 5: involvement with Boeing, for better or for worse. I mean,
Speaker 5: there's been a lot of criticism too, come from the
Speaker 5: President about the new version of Air Force one, the
Speaker 5: seven forty seven. Ken Boeing just sell those planes to
Speaker 5: other countries because there is such a backlog if China
Speaker 5: were to dry up.
Speaker 1: I think there was a headline about an hour ago
Speaker 1: saying Air India might buy those Chinese planes. So here's
Speaker 1: a note we put out three weeks ago. It was
Speaker 1: called how many planes does it take to get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of the trade deficit? When you think about
Speaker 1: aerospace and defense. It is the only manufacturing center with
Speaker 1: a sector with a sixty two billion dollar surplus. So
Speaker 1: what can you buy if you have a trade deficit
Speaker 1: that costs seventy million or four hundred million an airplane?
Speaker 1: It's easily trackable. So we did a note where we
Speaker 1: looked at every one point of reduction to the Chinese
Speaker 1: US deficode, which is two hundred and finety five billion
Speaker 1: is about fifty plans. So obviously it would take a
Speaker 1: lot of planes from China.
Speaker 3: To offset it.
Speaker 1: But it's a good chip President Trump could put on
Speaker 1: the table for folks.
Speaker 3: All right, on your radar for Boeing last twenty seconds,
Speaker 3: just watch what.
Speaker 1: Free cash flow and max production. That's all that matters.
Speaker 3: All right, great stuff, Thank you so much, sheille I
Speaker 3: really appreciate it. She's managing director and equity research over
Speaker 3: at Jeffreys, joining us here in studio.
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Speaker 5: Three point eight percent of the upside is where we
Speaker 5: see shares of Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The
Speaker 5: company reported first quarter revenue and profit that exceeded analysts expectations.
Speaker 5: It was bullied by continued strength in its search advertising business.
Speaker 5: And that's exactly where we want to go.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 5: We've got back with us Mark Douglas. He's president and
Speaker 5: CEO of Mountain. The company is software that helps companies
Speaker 5: target advertising on smart TVs. He understands the ad spend market.
Speaker 5: He joins us from Miami. Mark, good to talk with
Speaker 5: you again. Does this surprise you given the trends that
Speaker 5: you're seeing when it comes to advertising?
Speaker 6: Not given the trends I think the trends for I
Speaker 6: want to talk more specifically about Google.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think we started the you know, we started the
Speaker 6: year and I think everyone literally everyone was very optimistic
Speaker 6: about the economy, you know, Q one and Google's reporting
Speaker 6: on those results, I think they did very well. I
Speaker 6: think there were concerns and continue to be concerns about
Speaker 6: whether AI on their platform, meaning in your search results,
Speaker 6: is going in some way negatively impact the search business.
Speaker 6: But I think as an investment even there just provide
Speaker 6: some comment on that. Look, I'd rather have Google competing
Speaker 6: with themselves than allowing other people to compete with them.
Speaker 6: So I think even that's a positive if in the
Speaker 6: future it does have some you know, negative impact.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's funny that you say that, you know,
Speaker 3: and I'm looking at our right through by our Davy Alba.
Speaker 3: But this whole idea that you know, alphabet, Google has
Speaker 3: to show right that it still has momentum and search,
Speaker 3: advertising and cloud, but at the same time show that
Speaker 3: it's as it makes incredible investments in the AI build out,
Speaker 3: as the world kind of shifts in that direction, that
Speaker 3: it's also there as well. It's really tricky, and this
Speaker 3: is what our man Deep Singh said. You know, this
Speaker 3: is a company that's got seven apps with over i
Speaker 3: think two billion monthly active users. It's bread and butter
Speaker 3: is still Google, right, and it's search business. But as
Speaker 3: people move to chat, Gibt or Gemini like, that's a
Speaker 3: tough transition. It's got to juggle a lot.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then like I said, I think if I'm
Speaker 6: an investor in Google, the I always say to my company,
Speaker 6: better we compete with ourselves than we allow someone else
Speaker 6: to do it. So if I'm an investor, what I'm
Speaker 6: looking for is that the management team is awake, they're alert,
Speaker 6: and they're ready to compete. And I think Google's showing
Speaker 6: that and what they're doing with Gemini, and they're showing
Speaker 6: that they can still navigate search also with a company
Speaker 6: with that scale. You mentioned the tremendous scale they have. Honestly,
Speaker 6: you can find you can always squeeze out more revenue
Speaker 6: and as a result, more earnings. So I think it
Speaker 6: also shows that they can manage the business in order
Speaker 6: to find those extra dollars if they need to, while
Speaker 6: they might be challenged in other areas.
Speaker 5: Is this the classic innovator's dilemma? Though Google's core search
Speaker 5: business is so profitable and it's so entrenched, and it's
Speaker 5: so ingrained and pretty much almost every country in the world,
Speaker 5: you have to say almost that there is a concern
Speaker 5: that it doesn't want to cannibalize that with investment in Gemini.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's what you don't want to see what you
Speaker 6: want them to be like, like you almost wanted to
Speaker 6: be two separate companies, and they just go at it
Speaker 6: and made the best you know, part of Google win.
Speaker 3: The other thing they wanted to Google wins. That's the point, right,
Speaker 3: Like you said, you like to be competing with yourself
Speaker 3: forgive me go ahead.
Speaker 4: No exactly.
Speaker 6: The other thing to remember, you know, mobile was a
Speaker 6: big threat to Google. Yeah, like like Google was all
Speaker 6: desktop and you have your browser out. That's still you know,
Speaker 6: obviously a huge part of their business. And people were
Speaker 6: very worried about whether, you know, people were going to
Speaker 6: search on mobile and if they did, whether they were
Speaker 6: going to respond to the ad. So, I mean, it's
Speaker 6: not the first time Google has been challenged by new
Speaker 6: technologies and they you know, honestly kudos to them, because
Speaker 6: I expected Gemini to to possibly cause some problems in
Speaker 6: Q one and the yeah, in terms of their revenue,
Speaker 6: and obviously it hasn't.
Speaker 3: Hey, one last question on the upcoming call with analysts,
Speaker 3: what do you what would you be asking?
Speaker 6: What do you want to hear the I would be
Speaker 6: all about Gemini and how AI results at the top
Speaker 6: of the search page, which essentially I have replaced the
Speaker 6: paid you know, the click ads, the paid ads at
Speaker 6: the top of the search page for a lot of
Speaker 6: the searches. I would want to ask every possible question
Speaker 6: I can on data related to how that's impacting this
Speaker 6: that their search revenue. There's search results, responses to the searches, everything,
Speaker 6: and try, if I'm an analyst, try to model that out.
Speaker 3: All right, we're talking, of course with Mark Douglas, president
Speaker 3: and CEO of Mountain. We want to bring into the
Speaker 3: conversation Man Deep. Seeing he is senior tech industry analyst
Speaker 3: at Bloomberg Intelligence, just coming in the studio. It's a
Speaker 3: little crazy, so he hasn't heard everything that Mark had
Speaker 3: to say. But Mark said, you know, he's curious about
Speaker 3: Gemini is something he's going to be looking out on
Speaker 3: the call. Man Deep, you told us, you told us
Speaker 3: what to do. Man dprrect you NonStop because you said
Speaker 3: it's all about search. So walk us through what they
Speaker 3: got in and how it how it's sees, how it
Speaker 3: looks for you because investors like it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean the Google Services revenue was a slight beat,
Speaker 8: but what was really impressive was the margin beat on
Speaker 8: the Google Services.
Speaker 6: And a lot of.
Speaker 8: It is because everyone thought, because they're adding AI overviews,
Speaker 8: that's going to hurt the margins of search.
Speaker 4: Oh it didn't happen.
Speaker 7: Why didn't Why didn't that happen?
Speaker 5: What's because you have to explain this from the perspective
Speaker 5: of a Google user, like the experience, if we get
Speaker 5: the if we get the answer with the AI overview,
Speaker 5: we're not looking at ads, We're not clicking on things.
Speaker 7: Yeah, why doesn't it hurt?
Speaker 8: Because they have so many different types of queries on
Speaker 8: Google Search that some of those queries they are able
Speaker 8: to monetize it just through ads on AI overviews. Remember,
Speaker 8: Google never went away from ads, even though they integrated elements.
Speaker 8: Ads has always been a core part of of the
Speaker 8: Google dot Com offering, even with the AI overviews, and
Speaker 8: they somehow weave the ads in a way where they're
Speaker 8: able to charge for those ads. That's what makes them
Speaker 8: so special.
Speaker 7: I can't I never look at an AD on like
Speaker 7: what is wrong?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: When I look at an AI overview answers.
Speaker 8: On whether it's you know, an informational query versus an
Speaker 8: e commerce query or a travel query or an auto query.
Speaker 8: The pay change is so dynamic that they are able
Speaker 8: to weave in the right ads with the right kind
Speaker 8: of target.
Speaker 5: What about with the Gemini app and like the app experience,
Speaker 5: are they able to make money doing that yet?
Speaker 7: Does that matter? I mean You have to.
Speaker 3: Remember Google does five trillion. Search is a year five.
Speaker 8: Trillion, So you know, even if they monetize twenty to
Speaker 8: twenty five percent, which is the case, seventy five percent
Speaker 8: of the queries are not monetized. Imagine how much power
Speaker 8: they have in terms of the targeting they have with
Speaker 8: the ads as well as the number of queries. Even
Speaker 8: if chatgip he's taking some volume. Yeah, brilliant is a lot. Mark.
Speaker 3: I want to bring you back in as we've got
Speaker 3: Mandeep seeing Brilliant part of our Bloomer Intelligence team. Mark Douglass,
Speaker 3: President and Chief executive Officer Mountain, really great perspective in
Speaker 3: terms of advertising within this world. But you mentioned something
Speaker 3: about Gemini that you want to hear on the call.
Speaker 3: Just lay it out again for man Deep so that
Speaker 3: we can kind of dig into that with him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I think it's similar comments, which is
Speaker 6: the Google as a company. I think what's most important
Speaker 6: to see is that they let the different parts of
Speaker 6: the company compete. So Gemini competes with with with search results,
Speaker 6: because if they don't compete with themselves, then open ai
Speaker 6: and others are going to do the competition for them,
Speaker 6: and so I think it's important that they let them compete.
Speaker 6: It appears they are. And I also agree with the
Speaker 6: other comment that he just had in terms of scale
Speaker 6: of their business is like, you know you can increase
Speaker 6: search results, you know, eight search results one half of
Speaker 6: one percent, and b they have a lot of levers
Speaker 6: to pull and I think they're doing a good job
Speaker 6: pulling them to be able to navigate this linemup right now.
Speaker 8: And the point about Gemini not only does it like
Speaker 8: there's a competitive aspect, but also you learn so much
Speaker 8: more about the user. Imagine they are on Gmail Maps Search.
Speaker 8: Now you've got one more app where you have your user,
Speaker 8: You're learning about their type of queries. How would their
Speaker 8: AT targeting become suddenly because they are facing through Gemini now,
Speaker 8: so there's one more surface that you are adding, and
Speaker 8: it complements their AT targeting.
Speaker 3: Mark brings up this concept of great to compete with
Speaker 3: yourself and so essentially that's kind of what Alphabet's doing
Speaker 3: right with Google Search and then Gemini. But is it
Speaker 3: a guarantee that everybody who's been using Google is just
Speaker 3: going to easily just kind of segue into Gemini. Can
Speaker 3: we assume that that will happen.
Speaker 8: I mean, Google is still the verb and I don't
Speaker 8: think it's changing anytime soon. Yes, you can say chat
Speaker 8: GPT for certain informational queries and for certain queries, chat
Speaker 8: GPT does a great job. But if you're thinking about
Speaker 8: the Google ecosystem, you know, the all the apps that
Speaker 8: you are used to using on the consumer side on
Speaker 8: a day to day basis, it's hard to take yourself
Speaker 8: out completely from the Google ecosystem. You'll still be using
Speaker 8: Gmail apps, YouTube, even if you use chat GPT. I
Speaker 8: mean a lot of times chat GPT shows you a
Speaker 8: search result and then you go to maps to search
Speaker 8: for you know, the exact address that chat GPT show.
Speaker 5: Right right, hey man d Alphabet shares up four percent
Speaker 5: in the after hours, Meta platforms up two point three percent.
Speaker 5: Amazon shares are hired by one percent. All happening because
Speaker 5: of what we heard from Alphabet. Is this just a
Speaker 5: huge sigh of relief when it comes to megacap tech,
Speaker 5: I mean, is everything okay?
Speaker 7: Are we out of the world.
Speaker 8: I'll wait for the call, because remember Liberation Day was
Speaker 8: April second.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is through March thirty first. We don't even know.
Speaker 8: It's a great impact of tariffs was I mean, all
Speaker 8: that happened at the beginning of two Q So maybe
Speaker 8: I think too far fashion thinking, you know, we're out
Speaker 8: of the woods. But it's a good print.
Speaker 3: It's a good point. It's a good point. Mark, come on, Beck,
Speaker 3: And I'm curious if you have a question for man
Speaker 3: deep saying, like, you know, you follow this market, you
Speaker 3: follow this company. I'm just curious.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I actually want to take the conversation slightly to
Speaker 6: another part of Google's business. One of the things, you know,
Speaker 6: I'm still very much an active engineer, and one of
Speaker 6: the things I'm saying is Google be very aggressive are
Speaker 6: capturing market share in the Google Cloud business. And that's
Speaker 6: not something I think many people are talking about today,
Speaker 6: but that's potentially, you know, setting up from some really
Speaker 6: good results in that part of the business in the future.
Speaker 6: So I'm curious, Mandy, if you have any thoughts on
Speaker 6: that part of Google.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean it goes to the point about you know,
Speaker 8: then having this huge infrastructure that powers their family of
Speaker 8: apps also powers the cloud business. And thirty percent growth
Speaker 8: on a fifty billion dollars runderrate is very impressive, right.
Speaker 8: The problem for Google is it doesn't generate the same
Speaker 8: kind of profitability that search does, and that's why investors
Speaker 8: don't care that much. But look, I think they could
Speaker 8: even grow faster on the cloud side. They're probably somewhat
Speaker 8: supply constraint that everyone is in terms of AI infrastructure,
Speaker 8: so that cloud business could continue to compound at twenty
Speaker 8: five thirty percent clip. For a while, we've.
Speaker 3: Been talking about how the stock has really popped in
Speaker 3: the after hours. It's off some of its highest levels
Speaker 3: in the aftermarket, Mandi, but still up about four percent.
Speaker 3: But that point that you said, this is through March
Speaker 3: thirty first, not before kind of the stuff hit the
Speaker 3: fan right and has really kind of changed the environment.
Speaker 3: Is that a very very important caveat because these are
Speaker 3: the kind of companies right in the next week or so,
Speaker 3: these big megacap tech companies that were like, what do
Speaker 3: they have to say in this environment? So I'm just
Speaker 3: curious if you have to be kind of smart as
Speaker 3: we go through and.
Speaker 8: Not to take both sides. But on the top line,
Speaker 8: I think search Beat wasn't that impressive as it was
Speaker 8: the last time around. It's more the margin expansion because
Speaker 8: everyone thought AI overviews would hurt margins. So clearly they
Speaker 8: have executed very well on that. The buyback and the
Speaker 8: dividend is a good capital allocation. But in the end,
Speaker 8: you know, search Beat wasn't that impressive. You know, for
Speaker 8: a five percent increase in the stock.
Speaker 5: Would a five percent boost to its dividend happen if
Speaker 5: Alphabet were concerned about the environment in the current quarter
Speaker 5: and for the remainder of the year, Mande, I mean clearly,
Speaker 5: like is that an indication that things are pretty good?
Speaker 5: If we look at that as a potential sign of guidance.
Speaker 8: It's more the fact that they traded a much lower
Speaker 8: multiple than their peers, you know, Microsoft and Amazons, So
Speaker 8: from that perspective, you could say management feels their stock
Speaker 8: is cheap. But look, they're making this acquisition of wiz
Speaker 8: where they are paying thirty three billion dollar money. It's
Speaker 8: going to close, so it's not going to affect the
Speaker 8: free cash flow this year. But if they spend seventy
Speaker 8: five to eighty billion dollars in data center capex and
Speaker 8: then thirty three billion dollars in this acquisition, then you know,
Speaker 8: you're not able to fund all these buybacks and dividend
Speaker 8: with your free cash flow.
Speaker 4: Anymore.
Speaker 3: I wonder if both of you. I'm looking at our
Speaker 3: market's live blog and our macro strategist, one of them
Speaker 3: writing that the headline is a beat, but it was
Speaker 3: driven by advertising where revenue rows eight and a half
Speaker 3: percent from a year earlier. That's not going to help
Speaker 3: the rest of the Magnificent seven very much. Mark, you
Speaker 3: have any thoughts on that, because we are getting ready
Speaker 3: to have all of these names and numbers and results
Speaker 3: coming at us, and we know investors love to know
Speaker 3: what the mag seven are doing.
Speaker 6: Well, I think it indicates that Q one was a
Speaker 6: healthy environment for Google and likely for other companies, especially
Speaker 6: in tech. I think they question on Q two very
Speaker 6: valid question fall investors, But I think for Q one,
Speaker 6: I think maybe people are mixing these quarters together in
Speaker 6: their mind. Q one solid for Google, guessing is probably
Speaker 6: educated guess solid for these other big tech stocks.
Speaker 4: Also.
Speaker 3: All right, Mark, we're going to leave it there with you.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, So good to check in with
Speaker 3: you once again. Mark Douglas, President and CEO of Mountain
Speaker 3: joining us from Miami. Your thoughts on that, man deep
Speaker 3: in terms of what's to come. I mean, there's alphabet
Speaker 3: and how they make money, and then there's the rest.
Speaker 3: Is there any assumptions we can make or not? Really,
Speaker 3: they're all kind of different.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I think after the call we'll have a better sense
Speaker 8: of how they are viewing the environment. I mean, the
Speaker 8: whole thing about Chinese advertisers pulling back, and Alphabet in
Speaker 8: general has a broader swath of advertisers on their platform.
Speaker 8: When you think about Meta, even though you know it's
Speaker 8: duopoly and Meta probably is more skew towards I would
Speaker 8: say retail, and yeah, it doesn't have as much autos
Speaker 8: exposure as Alphabet has, so there is some nuance with
Speaker 8: regards to their advertiser base. Would say Alphabet is more diversifying.
Speaker 8: So if Chinese advertisers are pulling, that will hurt metamore
Speaker 8: for sure.
Speaker 5: Alphabet doesn't give guidance. So what do investors look for
Speaker 5: on the call to understand the current climate. Well, so
Speaker 5: CFO commentary, I mean, is there anything there that could
Speaker 5: move the needle?
Speaker 8: I think whatever they say around chat, GPT and LLMS
Speaker 8: and just overall color around competition, because this is the
Speaker 8: first time everyone cares about, you know, comments related to search.
Speaker 8: I mean, up until two quarters back, it was like Oh, okay,
Speaker 8: Google is a monopoly. Everyone knows that at pricing may
Speaker 8: go up and down depending on the cyclicality of the economy.
Speaker 8: But now the competitive threat is real.
Speaker 5: But the competitive threat's the competitive threat with AI and lllms.
Speaker 5: What about the just the idea that if it's an
Speaker 5: economy where there's uncertainty, marketers pull back from advertising. That
Speaker 5: would hit this company very hard.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but I think what they showed in the is
Speaker 8: ad pricing actually rent up.
Speaker 7: For the first quarter.
Speaker 4: For the first quarter.
Speaker 7: This is not the second quest.
Speaker 8: It's not gonna again. If you think about online ads,
Speaker 8: Google is the last place where advertisers will pull back
Speaker 8: because it's the highest ROI out spend.
Speaker 5: You you get you actually you pay for what you get. Essentially, yeah,
Speaker 5: you're not buying it.
Speaker 8: If you're looking for customers online, Google is still the
Speaker 8: best place because it's the most effective. Remember, they collect
Speaker 8: data from eight apps that you're interfacing with, and that's
Speaker 8: why the ad is so targeted. Google Metal also has
Speaker 8: four apps, but then Google probably has more data about
Speaker 8: you in terms of targeting you.
Speaker 7: That's why they're so effective, right.
Speaker 3: Really specific data right of exactly what you are doing
Speaker 3: to instent of it on any given No, that's why
Speaker 3: I don't understand why they're showing me the car searches.
Speaker 7: But I don't know why they keep showing me cars.
Speaker 7: I'm not buying cars.
Speaker 3: No, it's really fascinating, Men Deep, Thank you as always always,
Speaker 3: Men Deep saying, of course, senior tech industry analysts with
Speaker 3: our Bloomberg Intelligence team, shares off a bit, folks, up
Speaker 3: about three point nine percent in the aftermarket, definitely off
Speaker 3: its best levels of the day. Sales beat estimates on
Speaker 3: Google Search advertising.
Speaker 5: Yeah, in just a few minutes, we're going to be
Speaker 5: speaking to Ed Ludlow on Intel because shares of Intel
Speaker 5: in the aftermarket down six point three percent.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 2: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen
Speaker 2: on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app,
Speaker 2: or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 5: Well, shairs of Intel are selling off in the after hours,
Speaker 5: down right now by about five point three percent. It's
Speaker 5: attempting this comeback under a new CEO, lit Bhutan, and
Speaker 5: it gave a week forecast for current period. Also said
Speaker 5: it's cutting workers to bring costs in line with the
Speaker 5: business's smaller side. With more on Intel, we head out
Speaker 5: west to talk to the co host of Bloomberg Technology
Speaker 5: at Ludlow, who caught up earlier with Intel's CFO to
Speaker 5: talk about the earnings and the outlook. He joins us
Speaker 5: from the Bloomberg San Francisco News Bureau. What did you
Speaker 5: learn ad from Intel's CFO.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think quite a lot.
Speaker 9: Intel is still very far from where it wants to be,
Speaker 9: from where its customers want it to be, and the
Speaker 9: only way to get there is to readjust the makeup
Speaker 9: size of the workforce and also you know, look very
Speaker 9: closely at the balance sheet, and so like the major
Speaker 9: step that they're taking is pulling back on op X
Speaker 9: and CAPEX. They confirmed our reporting that there is going
Speaker 9: to be layoffs frankly, and that that thos layoffs are
Speaker 9: going to be in middle management. But it's really a
Speaker 9: story about a company that has a new CEO who's like,
Speaker 9: you know what, we are going to just get focused
Speaker 9: on technology. Although you know, as I said that, you've
Speaker 9: got a bit of sense of deja vous, because that
Speaker 9: was kind of the story the last time we had
Speaker 9: a new ZEO.
Speaker 5: I was going to how many years have we been
Speaker 5: talking about a turnaround at Intel?
Speaker 9: Yeah, so I was just wanting and king about Bloomberg's
Speaker 9: and king about this. It's like, what is the single
Speaker 9: head line on Intel, what is the new focus and
Speaker 9: where are they going to pull back? You know, Pat
Speaker 9: Gelsinger really wanted Intel to be a contract manufacturer to
Speaker 9: the world, right do what TSMC does alongside having its
Speaker 9: own products. Bhutan has just sent an email to employees
Speaker 9: this afternoon that we've seen and read and basically reading
Speaker 9: between the lines, I think that that is not a
Speaker 9: priority for him, the contract manufacturing bit. I think he's
Speaker 9: acknowledging and Dave Zinzna went through this on the phone
Speaker 9: with me that customers want one thing right now right,
Speaker 9: which is AI accelerators, high performance GPUs or AI chips
Speaker 9: that are involved in the training and inference stages of
Speaker 9: large language models and AI models. And Intel's just not
Speaker 9: been at the races there. So materially, what they're doing
Speaker 9: is they're cutting out middle management. They're going to rehire
Speaker 9: better people in the engineering space. And you may have
Speaker 9: seen a headline on the terminal just a couple of
Speaker 9: minutes ago they're going to make people come back to
Speaker 9: the office four days a week, which is interesting because
Speaker 9: like they're kind of late to do that in all
Speaker 9: the names we cover here.
Speaker 7: Wait, so they haven't been coming to the office four
Speaker 7: days a week.
Speaker 3: Is this the recipe for making Intel again a dominant
Speaker 3: chip player?
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 9: I don't want to confuse our audience. But basically, in
Speaker 9: the history of Silicon Valley and the world of technology,
Speaker 9: Intel is at its origin. Right when we think about
Speaker 9: the early days of semiconductors and the cutting edge of
Speaker 9: semiconductors and an annual cadence where technology got better, Intel
Speaker 9: was like the leader there and for a long time
Speaker 9: it has not been. It has fallen away. And you know,
Speaker 9: Zinzna when we was on the phone with me, and
Speaker 9: you know there's a reason that zins and the CFO
Speaker 9: was on the phone with me, right lit Bhutan is
Speaker 9: very early, it's just been at the company a couple
Speaker 9: of weeks. But they are trying to address culture. They
Speaker 9: think that basically that the culture that needs to be
Speaker 9: there to be like roofless and win and get ahead
Speaker 9: in the world of technology is not in place. And
Speaker 9: so yes, there will be a reduction enforce that will
Speaker 9: target middle MA, but I was surprised as anyone to
Speaker 9: see that part of that strategy is getting people to
Speaker 9: come back to offices, not just here in the valley
Speaker 9: but around the world.
Speaker 5: Is the reporting that the Bloomberg News team did earlier
Speaker 5: this week around the layoffs that was confirmed today are
Speaker 5: those we discussed?
Speaker 7: It?
Speaker 5: Are those numbers consistent with what we learned today publicly
Speaker 5: from Intel.
Speaker 9: So what Dave's inside of the CFO said to us
Speaker 9: on the phone was, I'm paraphrasing, but it was an
Speaker 9: interesting number because I don't quite have one yet myself.
Speaker 3: But the reason he doesn't is.
Speaker 9: That he knows what the opex and capital expenditures targets are.
Speaker 9: Now those are firm, right and you guys may have
Speaker 9: gone over those on air, but they've reduced op X
Speaker 9: and CAPEX for the full year CAPEX by about two
Speaker 9: billion dollars, and then op X came down a similar
Speaker 9: amount as well. And from that and knowing where in
Speaker 9: the ORG they're going to cut middle management, Dave knows
Speaker 9: what the end goal is, but he said, I don't
Speaker 9: have a percentage of overall workforce net what the layoffs
Speaker 9: will be, but they were confirmed there will be a
Speaker 9: reduction in middle management. And you know, the quote was
Speaker 9: very simple that they are going to cut out the
Speaker 9: bureaucracy that currently is in that company as well.
Speaker 3: So the CEO saying in a statement, I'm taking swift
Speaker 3: actions to drive better execution and operational efficiency while empowering
Speaker 3: our engineers to create great products. We're going back to
Speaker 3: basics by listening to our customers and making the changes
Speaker 3: needed to build the new Intel. So it's top customers, Dell, Lenovo, HP, Microsoft, Amazon,
Speaker 3: What do those customers want? What do they want from Intel?
Speaker 9: They want better products that where the technology can do
Speaker 9: better things. And on the phone, Dave was pretty forthright
Speaker 9: in saying that trust with their customers is not really
Speaker 9: in a great place at the moment. You know, Bhutan
Speaker 9: in that statement you just referenced, said that a lot
Speaker 9: of their problem right now and the reason that he's
Speaker 9: going to have to take severe action is due to
Speaker 9: prior actions the company has taken. And I think he
Speaker 9: was of course talking about the last leadership team. You know,
Speaker 9: the story of Intel is the stockstown five percent right,
Speaker 9: well almost six percent. We should like be clear that
Speaker 9: things have not improved, and you know, nor would you
Speaker 9: expect them to. It's only been a few weeks that
Speaker 9: the new CEO has been in place, but you know
Speaker 9: they beat in the first quarter where very simply there
Speaker 9: was a pull forward. Right those customers you just listed
Speaker 9: ordered chips in advance of tariffs coming, and hence the
Speaker 9: outlook for the current period is not great because they
Speaker 9: took from what they would normally order now into that
Speaker 9: first quarter, and the second quarter is not great.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 9: So there's a lot that needs to be done here.
Speaker 9: Designing and building cutting edge chips is what they plan
Speaker 9: to do.
Speaker 7: Can I talk about William with Ed?
Speaker 3: You could do whatever you want. This is America, you
Speaker 3: can do it.
Speaker 7: Ed's been riding in these forever. You know.
Speaker 5: It took me to my last I guess a couple
Speaker 5: of trips ago to San Francisco to do this.
Speaker 3: I guess it change man, change myself road in a WEYMO.
Speaker 5: But Romaine brought this idea up on the close that
Speaker 5: you know, it's in the other bets category of alphabet
Speaker 5: and there are you know, questions about how much these
Speaker 5: vehicles cost. What is the current valuation. You've written about
Speaker 5: this a few months ago. What is how is WEIMO valued?
Speaker 7: As a business.
Speaker 9: I listened to your conversation with the clothes anchors and
Speaker 9: with Mandeep as well. Astonishing what you guys got through
Speaker 9: that Weimo what we reported in its most recent private
Speaker 9: funding rounds forty five billion. But there are a few
Speaker 9: things that I think remain. In particular, I'd love to
Speaker 9: discuss this with Weimo has outside investors, and it is
Speaker 9: a material hardware company that's very different to Chrome. Yeah,
Speaker 9: you know what Romain was talking about is the valuation
Speaker 9: that that Chrome was assigned in the course of this
Speaker 9: antitrust trial. That fifty billion dollar Chrome valuation was given
Speaker 9: by the Duck Duck go CEO. But at the core
Speaker 9: of Chrome is that it's underlying technology is open source.
Speaker 9: So Microsoft's Edge browser is made of the same code
Speaker 9: base that Chrome is. They're they're not apples to apples.
Speaker 9: But he is right in the long term, like Waimo
Speaker 9: has a viable teacher. Many would think it's just that
Speaker 9: like that is far away, it is super far away.
Speaker 5: Well appreciate you joining us, great perspective. Ad La Low,
Speaker 5: co host of Bloomberg Technology in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast, available on Apple Spotify,
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