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Speaker 2: It is Bloomberg Business Week. Some news in the world
Speaker 2: of retail today Carol Macy's issuing a downbeat outlook for
Speaker 2: sales in the current quarter. It was a sign that
Speaker 2: executives might have been too optimistic about their expectations for
Speaker 2: the holiday shopping season. Abercrombie and Fitch announced better than
Speaker 2: expected sales for the holidays, but at share price tumbled
Speaker 2: this after its sales growth target fell short of some
Speaker 2: analyst expectations. They closed out the day lower by more
Speaker 2: than fifteen percent, close to sixteen percent. I do know
Speaker 2: that Travis has watches this stuff closely, the CEO of
Speaker 2: Big Commerce. It's an e commerce platform that works with
Speaker 2: businesses around the world to help them sell you their stuff.
Speaker 2: Companies such as Yetti Cycles, Johnny Walker, Uplift Desk are
Speaker 2: among Big Commerces customers. It's publicly traded on the NASDAK
Speaker 2: it's a small cap market value just shy of five
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars. Travis joins us here in the Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Interactive Brokers studio. Travis, good to see you doing some
Speaker 2: research on this, and you probably hate this comparison, but
Speaker 2: it's the world we know. I'm looking at the website,
Speaker 2: I'm understanding your business. Are you competitor Shopify?
Speaker 3: Of course, yeah, I certainly have come out of that
Speaker 3: ecosystem as well. I think our approach philosophically is different.
Speaker 3: So composibility is at the core of what we're doing,
Speaker 3: and if you want to draw an analogy, it's more
Speaker 3: open versus closed. I think our perspective on this is
Speaker 3: we believe more disruption and innovation will come by way
Speaker 3: of third party ISVs and software providers, and as a result,
Speaker 3: our focus is really about the ingestion of those capabilities
Speaker 3: now and in the future, as opposed to building them
Speaker 3: innately into the platform themselves.
Speaker 4: Would you say they are the biggest competitor out there?
Speaker 3: It depends on the market, certainly for traditional D two
Speaker 3: C and certainly digital native vertical brands. Unquestioned. I think
Speaker 3: if you look at the meaning director direct.
Speaker 5: To consumer correct go ahead, it's finish your point.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think if you look at different markets, different geographies,
Speaker 3: you're certainly going to have a different types of competitors,
Speaker 3: but certainly they're the most outward and vocal about it
Speaker 3: and certainly the one most obvious to understand.
Speaker 5: So tell us a company comes to you a retail
Speaker 5: and tell us what you do for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think for retailers, brand manufacturers, manufacturers and distributors,
Speaker 3: we are optimizing revenue for them while driving profitability independent
Speaker 3: of channel. I think the name of the game now
Speaker 3: is to go where customers want to interface with you
Speaker 3: as a brand, regardless of where they may buy your
Speaker 3: product or service. And I think the key challenges organizational
Speaker 3: agility at the organizational level to be able to go, experiment,
Speaker 3: drive value exchange through those different channels with speed agility
Speaker 3: at scale.
Speaker 5: So this means potentially building out an e commerce platform,
Speaker 5: but also then helping them with what back office maybe
Speaker 5: at actual retail operations, and making it all work together
Speaker 5: one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: So whether it's an own channel or a non owned
Speaker 3: channel that could be sitting brick and mortar with an
Speaker 3: own brick and mortar retail, it could be non owned marketplace.
Speaker 3: It could be a social channel or those that made
Speaker 3: it come in the future.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about cart abandoned mint because this
Speaker 2: is an issue for retailers.
Speaker 4: Yeah time, Yeah, you put all the time. Well, what
Speaker 4: causes you to do it?
Speaker 5: Because I'm just not quite sure I really want something?
Speaker 5: Or I'm thinking about do I really need this? And
Speaker 5: it's so easy when you're just going through like yeah,
Speaker 5: and then I'm just like I'm done. So you know
Speaker 5: when I get those annoying emails like you left something
Speaker 5: in your car and I'm like, nope, I meant to.
Speaker 4: You got to return the card, Carrol.
Speaker 2: What causes me for card abandonment is maybe more lazy
Speaker 2: than Carol. It's the payment part. And one thing that
Speaker 2: I love seeing when.
Speaker 4: I'm checking out is Apple pay right there.
Speaker 2: Of course, all I have to do is put my
Speaker 2: face in my phone and press the button twice.
Speaker 4: It's bought.
Speaker 2: I don't have to pull out my credit card, enter
Speaker 2: the info, put in my eyes, wait to your.
Speaker 5: Two little ones can do.
Speaker 2: That they're allowed to do. No, that's not going to
Speaker 2: be good. What's the what's the check thought process? How
Speaker 2: do you make sure it's standardized? So it's so easy
Speaker 2: to part with your money.
Speaker 3: Well, to exactly your point, I mean, we take an
Speaker 3: agnostic approach to check out, so as far as ingestion
Speaker 3: of payment providers, whether that's Apple pay or PayPal or
Speaker 3: Stripe or whomever, obviously whatever fits the best use cases
Speaker 3: for a particular brand and size and business logic. But yes,
Speaker 3: it's to remove friction. It's to make that decision very quick,
Speaker 3: very easy, very seamless, so less steps.
Speaker 4: Along the PROCEMCE.
Speaker 2: Do you have your your own equivalent of shop pay, Like,
Speaker 2: if I'm buying something I don't even know if it's
Speaker 2: a Shopify powered site, I put in my phone number,
Speaker 2: they send me a text message boom.
Speaker 4: My information is already there. I don't need a password
Speaker 4: or anything. I got my stuff.
Speaker 3: We do that today. PayPal just lost fast Lane launched
Speaker 3: fast Lane, which is an alternative that with a much
Speaker 3: deeper install basis. Certainly, if you're anonymous coming to a
Speaker 3: site and you begin to check out and you're not
Speaker 3: logged in, the fact that they have your account information
Speaker 3: will prepopulate that and again remove friction and make it
Speaker 3: more accelerated.
Speaker 6: You don't have a native one for your company Historically,
Speaker 6: we've not gone to mart with native We've certainly talked
Speaker 6: about it, we've considered it that maybe something we explore
Speaker 6: in the future, but the business model for us has
Speaker 6: not been We are not a bank.
Speaker 3: We have not monetized and commercialized a business model based
Speaker 3: on a payment capacity. We've believed in very much, you know,
Speaker 3: and ingesting that agnostically.
Speaker 5: You know, it's so funny that you say that, Tim,
Speaker 5: that I do. I agree that, Like, you know, it's
Speaker 5: just sometimes been its Apple Page's just so easy. But
Speaker 5: sometimes with like shop pay and like the information comes
Speaker 5: up and I'm like, oh, yeah, somebody else has all
Speaker 5: my information, and like sometimes that freaks me out. How
Speaker 5: do you like continue to think about security of shoppers information?
Speaker 3: I think securities front and center obviously, and I think
Speaker 3: that the more personalized we get, it's kind of threading
Speaker 3: the needle. You want to serve up a very relevant,
Speaker 3: personalized experience, but not so much where it feels intrusive,
Speaker 3: where people are hesitant to obviously share information, because the
Speaker 3: more information they share, the more relevant immersive experience we
Speaker 3: can kind of deliver to them at scale. And so
Speaker 3: it is a fine balance for brands obviously wanting to
Speaker 3: capture consumer informational leverage it in a way that would
Speaker 3: be you know, viable and meaningful and driving efficacy, but
Speaker 3: not so much so it feels intrusive.
Speaker 5: You are shopping platforms, so you see, right, you see
Speaker 5: a lot of information, A lot of data goes through
Speaker 5: like you have access we know or like like I
Speaker 5: am curious about someone like you? Guys that what it
Speaker 5: tells us about what's going on with consumers and like
Speaker 5: the retail environment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we certainly can see consumer behavior as far as
Speaker 3: what's being added to col I.
Speaker 5: Wasn't trying to get you to tell me what tim
Speaker 5: last spot. But anyway, God, it's all good.
Speaker 3: Yes, of course we're I mean, and there's many companies
Speaker 3: that have access to these sorts of things that they
Speaker 3: want us to. Of course, we're going to see behavior
Speaker 3: of what's being added the car, where people are browsing,
Speaker 3: how often they're browsing, and what they're clicking on, what
Speaker 3: they're abandoning, and how that's facilitating abandoned card emails and
Speaker 3: things like that. And of course we're leveraging those capabilities
Speaker 3: and serving it back to organizations, and they're also using
Speaker 3: their own algorithms and analytics and insights internally to get
Speaker 3: better at what it is that they're doing.
Speaker 5: Well, what does it tell you about the consumers that
Speaker 5: you do have that access? Just big broad strokes here.
Speaker 3: I think consumers most recently become more promotionally oriented. I
Speaker 3: think a lot of people are abandoning carts because they're
Speaker 3: testing the waters on could I get a better deal
Speaker 3: if I wait to.
Speaker 5: Look at the un copons all the time? Yep, like wherever?
Speaker 3: And you've seen this trend through the holiday traffic. I
Speaker 3: think brands that have historically weren't promotional have gotten very promotional.
Speaker 3: I think you've seen a promotionally oriented economy in many capacities,
Speaker 3: certainly in traditional segments like fashion and health and beauty
Speaker 3: and things like that. I think most folks want some
Speaker 3: semblance of a recurring revenue models or anything that's subscriptively
Speaker 3: oriented becomes a bit easier to predict and a bit stickier,
Speaker 3: and those that aren't, again, especially with fast fashion and
Speaker 3: other industries where they're constantly turning over, it's all about
Speaker 3: velocity of skew volume. It does tend to be promotional,
Speaker 3: but it's also eroding margins. And again it's a fine line,
Speaker 3: especially with potentially looming tariffs. What impact is that going
Speaker 3: to have on profitability? If those tariffs negatively in fact
Speaker 3: a supply chain and cost of goods.
Speaker 2: Do you see the tariffs being implemented, Does that happen?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: Is that something that I think that's I think it's
Speaker 3: been signal letting, you know, lover hate the incoming administration.
Speaker 3: I think arguably you can judge past behavior that tariffs
Speaker 3: are a real thing. It's been certainly socialized, and depending
Speaker 3: on someone's supply chain and how oriented they are and
Speaker 3: producing things in areas that may be impacted by tariffs,
Speaker 3: it's certainly going to impact their business.
Speaker 4: Your customer is getting ready for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think everyone's getting ready for it, and I
Speaker 3: think you're seeing people hedge, certainly in industries that would
Speaker 3: be heavily impacted by manufacturing in China, maybe looking at
Speaker 3: alternatives in region or maybe bringing things more domestic. Depends
Speaker 3: on the industry, depends on the margin, but certainly it's
Speaker 3: it's front and center, all.
Speaker 2: Right, Travis Hess really cool stuff, Thanks so much for
Speaker 2: joining us. Congrats on the new job too.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys.
Speaker 2: Having CEO of a big commerce joining us here in
Speaker 2: the bloom we're gonnact to Brokers Studio Well. The forty
Speaker 2: third annual JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco is underway.
Speaker 2: It brings together healthcare executives and pharmaceutical industry leaders and
Speaker 2: tech innovators to discuss the latest in the sector. One
Speaker 2: of those companies is Oxford Nanoport Technologies. It's the one
Speaker 2: point six billion dollar market cap company that has devices
Speaker 2: that sequence DNA and RNA to offer real time analysis.
Speaker 2: We got with us right now. Doctor Gordon Sangarra, the
Speaker 2: co founder and CEO of Oxford Nanoport Technologies, joins us
Speaker 2: from the JP Morgan Health Conference. Shares surging today as
Speaker 2: much as twenty five percent. It's the steepest gain going
Speaker 2: back to September of twenty twenty one. So you guys
Speaker 2: had some news out a trading update that analysts certainly
Speaker 2: found reassuring. We're going to get to that a minute,
Speaker 2: but let's take a big step back here, because I'm
Speaker 2: interested in for the lay person understanding exactly what your
Speaker 2: device does, what your technology does.
Speaker 7: Sure, I'm afternoon, everybody from sunny San Francisco, warmer than London,
Speaker 7: so we have a genetic analyzer that is analogous to
Speaker 7: what happened in the computer industry. So today the incumbents
Speaker 7: that do genomic analysis are like mainframe computer providers. They're large,
Speaker 7: complex machines, multimillion dollar in multimillion dollar infrastructures. We are
Speaker 7: able to provide cheap, small devices, very similar to the
Speaker 7: change in computing from mainframe to desktop to handheld. Here's
Speaker 7: a sequencer I brought with me. This is our minion.
Speaker 2: So look it's like the size of a smartphone for
Speaker 2: people who are listening.
Speaker 7: It really is, yes, and that was critically important in
Speaker 7: distributed sequencing and understanding all the variants during the COVID epidemic.
Speaker 4: How much is one of these devices?
Speaker 7: Couple of thousand dollars, so very cheap, very affordable. It's
Speaker 7: that's orders of magnitude cheaper than an existing centralized machine
Speaker 7: where you're batching everything to get economies of scale. These
Speaker 7: things are pay as you go. So it's really the
Speaker 7: step change in the way that we saw democratization and
Speaker 7: access of compute. The same for DNA and information. As
Speaker 7: we know from the last pandemic, distributed access to DNR
Speaker 7: and information is going to be important to stamp that
Speaker 7: out quickly.
Speaker 5: Doctor Sinker. From our understanding the presentation you did, are
Speaker 5: doing or planning to do at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference,
Speaker 5: there's four core end markets for you guys. The biggest
Speaker 5: one is research. So by enabling researchers and R and
Speaker 5: d AT, I guess companies at academic universities and so on,
Speaker 5: and institutions, I guess tell us what that will be
Speaker 5: used for and what that enables these institutions and companies
Speaker 5: to do that they might not be able to do
Speaker 5: today so easily or so cheaply.
Speaker 7: Absolutely so, if we do it in the context of
Speaker 7: human genomes, that's three billion letters on what continuous chain
Speaker 7: for bases GTAC, And for twenty years people have taken
Speaker 7: that DNA, breaking it down into two hundred base bit
Speaker 7: of chains, made a copy. So I've gone from full
Speaker 7: high definition color to black and white, and then you
Speaker 7: get some interesting insights in biology, but you're really losing
Speaker 7: a lot. We're able to read the native DNA as
Speaker 7: it's presented from, for example, a patient sample, which means
Speaker 7: we can look at that DNA in full high definition
Speaker 7: in color in a very simple device in real time
Speaker 7: with affordable, accessible equipment. So those researchers, whether it's a
Speaker 7: PhD student in academia or you know, big biofarmers, they're
Speaker 7: able to illuminate what is often referred to as parts
Speaker 7: of the dark genome, which code for some of the
Speaker 7: most difficult disorders that we cannot get at today, mental health,
Speaker 7: neuroad generation, early early onset cancer, Alzheimer's, things like this,
Speaker 7: And they're now beginning and there are the foothills of
Speaker 7: that journey to understanding the biology that underpins these diseases
Speaker 7: that we've not really moved the needle on fifty years.
Speaker 5: So is this to help not only in treatment of individuals,
Speaker 5: but also to create better modalities.
Speaker 7: For treatment, absolutely, both accelerating biomarket discovery by moving to
Speaker 7: so people we all talk about the genome. So twenty
Speaker 7: years ago the genome was published, and that's really just
Speaker 7: looking at single point mutations. There is now a movement
Speaker 7: to multi omic genomes. What does that mean, Well, we
Speaker 7: have four bases GTAC. There is actually a fifth base,
Speaker 7: which is chemical corruption of your c base and that
Speaker 7: chemical change is methylation, and methylation is the smoking gun
Speaker 7: in all cancers. And that's been known for twenty years,
Speaker 7: but this technology really allows you to get comprehensive maps
Speaker 7: of methylation which are then having a huge impact immediately. So,
Speaker 7: for example, acute milue leukemia needs treatment immediately. Diagnosis today
Speaker 7: takes three to four days, maybe a week. By looking
Speaker 7: at methylation in those patient samples, so this chemical corruption,
Speaker 7: they can determine the type of leukemia AML in four
Speaker 7: to six hours and that is game changing in terms
Speaker 7: of treatment. So rapid insights in acute and critical care
Speaker 7: is something that this technology allows because it's distributed point
Speaker 7: of care, it's real time, and it's giving you content
Speaker 7: that you do not get with existing tech.
Speaker 2: Who help us underst stand who has the devices versus
Speaker 2: who doesn't have these devices?
Speaker 7: I e.
Speaker 2: What is the market opportunity that you have left at
Speaker 2: this point? Because if it is indeed something that offers
Speaker 2: a service at such a lower cost, then is everybody
Speaker 2: who wanted one do they have one yet?
Speaker 3: Not yet?
Speaker 7: It's a great question, and it's about the evolution of
Speaker 7: a disruptive new technology. We are in the foothills of
Speaker 7: that journey. So who has them today? These are the
Speaker 7: sort of forward thinking academic nissons by a farmer companies,
Speaker 7: particularly you know, the newer waive of synthetic biology, gene editing, bella,
Speaker 7: gene therapy companies. All of these people are creating momentum
Speaker 7: around the use cases and just sort of two to
Speaker 7: three up year outlook, you will see that then moving
Speaker 7: towards routine nical practice. And that's why, in what is
Speaker 7: an incredibly tough market, with all our peer groups either
Speaker 7: posting no growth or negative growth, we have continued to
Speaker 7: hit our year on year growth twenty three percent and
Speaker 7: half two to half two thirty four percent because there
Speaker 7: is that unmet need is being met and at breakneck
Speaker 7: speed on a weekly basis, we see game changing opportunities.
Speaker 7: The next phase of turning that into routine clinical workflows
Speaker 7: is something that will be big for us in twenty
Speaker 7: five and then twenty six, twenty seven you will start
Speaker 7: to see that market penetration too much broader routine use.
Speaker 5: So doctor Sinkara, So I don't know fast forward then
Speaker 5: is it five years from now, seven years from now?
Speaker 5: How might this product that you guys have developed, how
Speaker 5: might it change our worlds? To think about from our audience,
Speaker 5: a Bloomberg audience, from you know, financial perspective and an
Speaker 5: investing perspective. You know what opportunities that that potentially could
Speaker 5: open up as well, or your device could open up
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 7: Absolutely so in the last three or four years five years,
Speaker 7: early detection of cancer become a thing liquid biopsy, so
Speaker 7: where you're looking at short fragments of cancer cells before
Speaker 7: there's a tumor, and if you can pick that cancer
Speaker 7: up early, there's a real opportunity that your treatment outcomes
Speaker 7: can be much, much, incredibly improved. So I m visied
Speaker 7: your world three four or five years out where if
Speaker 7: you've had cancer, you're in remission. Instead of going for
Speaker 7: a six monthly check up, you'll do a monthly blood
Speaker 7: test and if you see that cancer reoccur, you pick
Speaker 7: it up immediately and it gets treated. But ultimately, if
Speaker 7: you come from a high risk grouping, because your whole
Speaker 7: genome has been sequenced and we know that you'll then
Speaker 7: be routinely surveyed and distributed, healthcare will become a big thing.
Speaker 7: But let me take that a step further. I'm Punjabi heritage,
Speaker 7: so I have a high propensity tocodiovascular disease and I
Speaker 7: should and probably should be on statins, but it turns
Speaker 7: out that if you were to eat tomato that are
Speaker 7: rich in something called beta licopene, you can get the
Speaker 7: same benefit of a drug statin. Wow, and so I
Speaker 7: envisited your world where through gene editing, I have a
Speaker 7: custom diet that would allow me to not have to
Speaker 7: take a drug but a nutraceutical, in this case a
Speaker 7: tomato that's been cross spread to have high licopene, which
Speaker 7: would have the same benefit of the statin. But it's natural.
Speaker 7: So I think there's just going to be I'm just
Speaker 7: kind of picturing two bookends of where and how ubiquitous
Speaker 7: us The ability to be able to do things with
Speaker 7: genetics and do it at a personalized level will really
Speaker 7: impact us.
Speaker 2: Hey, before we let you go, we only have about
Speaker 2: forty five seconds left, but we have a viewer listener
Speaker 2: getting in touch and curious about what you think on
Speaker 2: about GLP ones. Given that over the last couple of years, Uh,
Speaker 2: this is probably the medical technology that we've talked about
Speaker 2: the most.
Speaker 7: It is an interesting one. I'm looking forward to seeing
Speaker 7: the large cohorts of patients on GLP one being sequenced
Speaker 7: so we can really get that multiomic view and look
Speaker 7: at the cause and effect and better understand the mode
Speaker 7: of action which will be beneficial for everybody.
Speaker 2: So you don't you see a lot you see learning.
Speaker 2: We need to learn a lot more about them.
Speaker 7: I think so we own it's a great start, but
Speaker 7: there are already people talking about side effects and you know,
Speaker 7: not being as impactful as it needs to be. And
Speaker 7: understanding the biology source code of an individual who's taken
Speaker 7: these medicines is where the future lies. That individualized, personalized
Speaker 7: approach will be game changing well, and I think we
Speaker 7: make GLPS more.
Speaker 5: Efficient, interesting, fascinating conversation. I hope we can get you
Speaker 5: back real soon, Doctor Gordon Senghera. He's co founder and
Speaker 5: chief executive officer of Oxford Nanopore Technologies. As we said
Speaker 5: in the London trade soaring about twenty five percent