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Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Business Week Insight from the reporters and
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Speaker 2: Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Wee Weekend Podcast.
Speaker 3: Well it was a busy busy week as we got
Speaker 3: the FED minutes from the last meeting of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four and the final jobs report of the year twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four. Again. Also is showing of the latest gadgets
Speaker 3: and tech and trends at CES in Las Vegas, of
Speaker 3: which Nvidia's CEO Jensen Wong was a highlight but did
Speaker 3: not impress investors. Plus a huge story the wildfires in
Speaker 3: southern California. We spent a lot of time this past
Speaker 3: week talking about it. A lot going on for the
Speaker 3: latest onm THEI fires, and all of the top business
Speaker 3: and economic stories. Of course, you can always head to
Speaker 3: the Bloomberg End to Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 4: Carol, you mentioned in Nvidia and yet another megacap tech
Speaker 4: name was on our mind this past week, and that
Speaker 4: was Apple, the world's largest company my market value. It's
Speaker 4: kind of like sometimes the world's largest company. Sometimes not
Speaker 4: one too to say it's like among the world's largest companies.
Speaker 4: It got a rare cell call from one prominent tech
Speaker 4: and media stock analyst, and yet set analyst still likes
Speaker 4: the company. More on that a little.
Speaker 5: Bit later, all right.
Speaker 3: Plus Carnival CEO Josh Weinstein on what the cruise line
Speaker 3: Giant can do for an encore on the heels of
Speaker 3: strong quarterly earnings to cap off twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: And details on how to discover flavor and savor life.
Speaker 4: It's all in a new book by professional taste tester. Yes,
Speaker 4: it's a thing, Mandy Naglige.
Speaker 3: All right, all of this to come. We begin with
Speaker 3: that rare Apple downgrade. The call came from Mofatt Nathanson's
Speaker 3: Craig Moffat, a long time and known analyst in the
Speaker 3: media and content distribution space.
Speaker 6: This is largely a evaluation call, so I want to
Speaker 6: be clear Apple, we wouldn't argue with anyone who says
Speaker 6: Apple is a great company. We think that their AI
Speaker 6: strategy is a very sound strategy. I love the appeal
Speaker 6: of the fact that Apple has a low capital intensity
Speaker 6: approach to AI, that they have the trust of customers.
Speaker 7: And on and on.
Speaker 6: They have a lot of advantages. No one would dispute that.
Speaker 6: But it's trading at thirty three and a half time's earnings.
Speaker 6: And one way to think about it is just think
Speaker 6: about the peg ratio, if you will, the ratio of
Speaker 6: growth rate of the multiple to growth rate.
Speaker 7: It's trading at a PEG ratio north of three.
Speaker 6: The rest of the MAG seven trades at a PEG
Speaker 6: ratio of around two. So you're talking about a fifty
Speaker 6: percent premium even to the peers of within the MAG seven.
Speaker 7: That just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 6: Given what are some very material risks, and you mentioned
Speaker 6: some of them.
Speaker 7: China is a very real risk.
Speaker 6: Not just because the Chinese government, for obvious reasons, is
Speaker 6: going to be disinclined to allow Western language models in China,
Speaker 6: so you're going to have to have a domestic partner
Speaker 6: and share economics with them, but also because the Chinese
Speaker 6: handset competitors have gotten much stronger. Another risk that is
Speaker 6: not discounted in the stock price at all is the
Speaker 6: anti trust risk. And here I'm not talking about the
Speaker 6: anti trust risk in the cases against Apple, although there
Speaker 6: are plenty of them. The real anti trust risk that's
Speaker 6: very proximate is the risk in the Google case, where.
Speaker 8: Explain explain that risk to Apple? How is that? How
Speaker 8: is Apple at risk?
Speaker 6: Because twenty five percent of Apple's operating income comes from
Speaker 6: payments from Google, and the judge in the Google case
Speaker 6: has specific said those payments are illegal. Now, you can
Speaker 6: imagine that there are outcomes where where they still pay
Speaker 6: some or all of that, but you can't pretend that
Speaker 6: there's no risk at all when the judge has already
Speaker 6: said that Google is guilty and the payments they make
Speaker 6: to Apple are illegal. I mean, that's twenty five percent
Speaker 6: of apples operating income. It's it's twenty five billion dollars
Speaker 6: a year. And again, I love Apple just as much
Speaker 6: as everybody else, but there are very real risks that
Speaker 6: are simply not appropriately discounted in the multiple that Apple
Speaker 6: is being awarded right now in the market.
Speaker 4: I want to zero in on the China risk and
Speaker 4: what exactly is because this is a story we've been
Speaker 4: talking about for years. At this point, Craig like concern
Speaker 4: that you know, Chinese consumers are not going to buy
Speaker 4: as many Apple devices as they have previously. Switching costs
Speaker 4: are pretty switching barriers are pretty low in China because
Speaker 4: of these you know, over the top third party apps.
Speaker 4: People don't get locked into the iOS ecosystem like they
Speaker 4: do in other countries because if we chat, et cetera.
Speaker 4: So what's going on in China in your view?
Speaker 6: Well, I think the biggest thing that's going on in
Speaker 6: China is that the other handset manufacturers, Huawei and Honor
Speaker 6: and so on, have gotten much better. If you went
Speaker 6: back to the last big iPhone cycle, which was the
Speaker 6: five G cycle in circa twenty twenty one, the Apple
Speaker 6: competitors at the time were significantly weaker than they are today.
Speaker 6: And interestingly, Huawei in particular, because the government of the
Speaker 6: US put sanctions.
Speaker 7: On Huawei and limited Huawei's.
Speaker 6: Access to chipsets and that sort of thing, Huawei has
Speaker 6: had to sort of reinvent itself with domestic technology, and
Speaker 6: they've done a really good job. The handsets that they
Speaker 6: make are now fully competitive. They are not a replacement
Speaker 6: for Apple. I'm not suggesting that they are, but they
Speaker 6: have a really co petitive offering, and so the market
Speaker 6: share opportunity for Apple is simply not what it was
Speaker 6: in the last big cycle. But you also have this
Speaker 6: time the government's thumb on the scales. And there's a
Speaker 6: couple of ways for that. One is, as I said,
Speaker 6: you're simply not going to have the Chinese Communist Party
Speaker 6: saying it is acceptable to have Western lms answering questions
Speaker 6: like what happened at Tanneman Square. So you're going to
Speaker 6: have to have domestic partners in order to be able
Speaker 6: to offer AI, and that means a different margin structure.
Speaker 7: And what have you.
Speaker 6: You also have a very real risk from tariffs. And
Speaker 6: it's not just in fact, not even primarily that Apple
Speaker 6: itself imports almost all of its components, and in fact
Speaker 6: today imports all of its handsets, mostly from China because
Speaker 6: they're assembled there. Even if you even if they are
Speaker 6: exempted as they were during the last Trump administration, you
Speaker 6: have the risk of retaliatory tariffs in response to American
Speaker 6: tariffs that could be related to the auto market or
Speaker 6: completely unrelated categories, but where foreign governments respond by putting
Speaker 6: tariffs on a company that is obviously quite highly identified.
Speaker 8: With the US.
Speaker 6: So again I don't want to suggest that any of
Speaker 6: these risks are base case risks.
Speaker 7: It's not like there's a.
Speaker 6: Sixty or seventy percent chance that any one of them
Speaker 6: will happen. But if you have all of these potential risks,
Speaker 6: all of which are not shouldn't be described as sort
Speaker 6: of a tail risks.
Speaker 7: These are really.
Speaker 6: Real possibilities in all of these cases that there are
Speaker 6: negative outcomes, and they ought to be reflected in the
Speaker 6: multiple of the stock with a more sober multiple, and
Speaker 6: they simply are.
Speaker 4: Not craig A device is not seen as having the
Speaker 4: same allure to the Chinese consumer as they once did.
Speaker 7: You know, I don't know that that's the case.
Speaker 6: There is still Apple is still a brand with real
Speaker 6: cachet in.
Speaker 7: China. But you know, remember you now have.
Speaker 6: Huawei introduced a trifold phone, for example, where you have
Speaker 6: Samsung devices that have had foldable screens for a long
Speaker 6: time coming in from from Korea. So the gap between
Speaker 6: Apple and its competitors is not what it once was.
Speaker 6: There's just there's simply no way to argue that's that's.
Speaker 7: Not the case.
Speaker 3: You know your report, You know, pundents, you have watched
Speaker 3: Apple stockgrind higher of the last several months, have shrugged
Speaker 3: off the appreciation as a melt up on known news.
Speaker 3: But that's not quite right. And you know, there has
Speaker 3: been a lot of news, right, it's just.
Speaker 9: All been bad. Why them melt up? Then?
Speaker 3: Why does everybody I don't know, maybe it's a stupid question,
Speaker 3: but why does everybody continue to chase it and send
Speaker 3: it higher when there are some real threats in terms of,
Speaker 3: as you said, the DOJ case against Google that would
Speaker 3: really take out a big chunk of kind of the
Speaker 3: financial or the balance sheet right of that company of
Speaker 3: Apple specifically. So why does everybody kind of continue to
Speaker 3: support it? Why do they chase it? Why is there
Speaker 3: the melt up?
Speaker 7: You know, it's a great question. Now, first I should
Speaker 7: be clear, you know.
Speaker 6: Although the stock has climbed higher and higher over the
Speaker 6: last few months, it's only traded in line.
Speaker 7: With the market.
Speaker 6: So to some degree, this is an indictment of the
Speaker 6: way the market overall is pricing equities right now, particularly
Speaker 6: in the face of rising interest rates in therefore appropriately
Speaker 6: higher discount rates.
Speaker 7: It's but I suspect Carol.
Speaker 6: That the real issue here is is that there is
Speaker 6: this narrative that Apple is the quote unquote safe choice
Speaker 6: among the magsat and that it is such a strong
Speaker 6: consumer brand, has such an unassailable franchise that it's the
Speaker 6: safe place to be. And while that's absolutely true operationally,
Speaker 6: it's not a safe place to be if it's trading
Speaker 6: at thirty three times earnings. It's a safe place to
Speaker 6: be if it's appropriately valued, but it's if it's already
Speaker 6: being awarded an extraordinarily high multiple. Nothing safe about that,
Speaker 6: even if it is a very strong business model.
Speaker 3: So if it gets down to one eighty eight that's
Speaker 3: your price target, do you change your rating and do
Speaker 3: you say, okay, now you can come in and buy,
Speaker 3: or do you kind of still wait and see.
Speaker 6: Well, we would certainly say that what you want to
Speaker 6: get to is you want to get to a price
Speaker 6: where it's fairly valued, and if it gets below that,
Speaker 6: then there's actually an opportunity to buy it. And I
Speaker 6: certainly wouldn't argue that Apple doesn't deserve an attractive valuation.
Speaker 7: It's a great company.
Speaker 6: It's just that when you start to get to thirty
Speaker 6: three times earnings, and again a peg ratio of north
Speaker 6: of three, that implies is that the market has already
Speaker 6: priced in an enormous amount of potential good news, and
Speaker 6: so you'd have to see something quite extraordinary to be
Speaker 6: able to say that over the next call it, one, two,
Speaker 6: three years, that the stock can actually deliver attractive returns
Speaker 6: given this starting point.
Speaker 4: Okay, Craig, while we have you, you don't just cover Apple,
Speaker 4: you also cover Comcast, Echo, Star, Charter, Altie, S, Verizon,
Speaker 4: and more. Charter Communications. It's your top pick for twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five, despite cord cutting accelerating, despite what's happening to PATV,
Speaker 4: Why is it your top pick?
Speaker 7: You know, it's funny in some ways.
Speaker 6: It is the exact antithesis of what we were just
Speaker 6: talking about with Apple. Charter and the cable stocks have
Speaker 6: been given up for dead, and so they are extraordinarily
Speaker 6: attractive valuations. And a company like Charter, remember Charter was
Speaker 6: one of the best performing stocks in the S and
Speaker 6: P for a decade. It was out twenty refold. I
Speaker 6: think over a decade when.
Speaker 7: It was buying back a ton of stock and.
Speaker 6: Had a really attractive levered equity return strategy. They suspended
Speaker 6: that strategy for a while in order to invest really
Speaker 6: aggressively in rural buildouts, and the market has seen the
Speaker 6: free cash flow yield go down during.
Speaker 7: That capital investment cycle.
Speaker 6: You could argue that those are actually pretty good investments,
Speaker 6: but the market hasn't found them as exciting as the
Speaker 6: old strategy of buying back stock. Well, they've already said
Speaker 6: they're largely getting to the end of that strategy, and
Speaker 6: so they will as CAPEC starts to come down, they're
Speaker 6: going to resume their stock buybacks in a very big way.
Speaker 6: And it's a company that we see growing in the
Speaker 6: load of mid single digits. Not sexy, but by the way,
Speaker 6: that's what Apple is growing as well, but growing in
Speaker 6: the load of call it low single digits. But it's
Speaker 6: priced for negative perpetual growth. And by our twenty twenty
Speaker 6: eight free cash flow estimate, we have this thing trading
Speaker 6: at a something like thirty three percent free cash flow
Speaker 6: yield on twenty twenty eight. That's an absurd, absurd valuation,
Speaker 6: and so I just think it's way too cheap and
Speaker 6: a really exciting opportunity at this price.
Speaker 3: Hey Craig, just one last question. You know, it's funny
Speaker 3: coming off the Golden Globes, I was kind of like,
Speaker 3: oh my God, it's just content coming from just all
Speaker 3: these different places and streaming and regular teeth.
Speaker 9: It's just kind of nuts.
Speaker 3: But I am curious as we look at where content's
Speaker 3: coming in particular streaming other than Netflix. Do you think
Speaker 3: the legacy media companies can navigate the change towards streaming.
Speaker 10: In a clear way?
Speaker 9: And unfortunately just got about forty five seconds.
Speaker 6: Well, it depends what you mean by can they navigate it?
Speaker 6: Will they survive? Of course? Will it ever be as
Speaker 6: good a business as the old legacy cable network business
Speaker 6: was and it's heyday. No, it's just not going to
Speaker 6: be as attractive a business because it's so much easier
Speaker 6: for customers to churn. That creates a less attractive revenue profile,
Speaker 6: a less attractive cost profile.
Speaker 7: But you will still have.
Speaker 6: Winners, and they may not be winners on the scale
Speaker 6: of Netflix. But Disney is still going to be all
Speaker 6: right in the streaming business. Again, it's just not going
Speaker 6: to be as good as the business that they are
Speaker 6: leaving behind.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you so much. Really really enjoyed this,
Speaker 3: and happy New Year to you. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Craig Moffatt, founding partner and senior Alist Debret Moffatt Nathanson
Speaker 3: joining us right here in New York City. If you
Speaker 3: missed any of it, be sure to check out our
Speaker 3: podcast feed a little bit later on. You can find
Speaker 3: it at Blomberg dot com.
Speaker 9: I'm on the Bloomberg.
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Speaker 3: So we got a big read on the US economy
Speaker 3: this past week. We had that monthly jobs report on Friday.
Speaker 3: We also got fed Minutes on Wednesday. You can read
Speaker 3: all about it. Check out our full coverage on the
Speaker 3: Bloomberg terminals. Simply type ECoG or head over to Bloomberg
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 4: Another way that we gauge US economic activity is through
Speaker 4: what consumers are doing, including spending on leisure and hospitality.
Speaker 4: We recently got a reading on that when Carnival released earnings.
Speaker 4: The company expects record levels of cruise demand this year,
Speaker 4: with no signs of a slowdown in sight.
Speaker 3: For more on the business of leisure and cruises in particular,
Speaker 3: we recently cut up with Josh Weinstein. He's the president, CEO,
Speaker 3: and chief Climate officer of Carnival. We talked to him
Speaker 3: just after the company reported earnings in late December. He
Speaker 3: kicked things off by sharing context on the business.
Speaker 11: If you look at where we are today versus same
Speaker 11: time last year, we are higher in occupancy, higher in prices.
Speaker 12: As a matter of fact, it's.
Speaker 11: Historical levels for both for each of the four quarters
Speaker 11: for twenty twenty five. So, as I heard you saying
Speaker 11: before I came on, the demand for our cruises is pretty.
Speaker 4: Phenomenal typically this time of year, Josh, how much of
Speaker 4: the following year is booked? How different is this than
Speaker 4: historical averages.
Speaker 11: We don't give that out for various competitive reasons, but
Speaker 11: I'd say it's nicely it's nicely higher. To give you
Speaker 11: a sense of the momentum, you know, if you think
Speaker 11: about what was our booking activity, how much activity did
Speaker 11: we generate in the last quarter, So from the period
Speaker 11: of September through the end of November, that beat last
Speaker 11: year even though we had less to sell. So we
Speaker 11: sold more for twenty twenty five, and we sold it
Speaker 11: at higher prices versus same time last year. And at
Speaker 11: the same time we set a record for booking activity
Speaker 11: for the following year out so in this case twenty
Speaker 11: twenty six. So things are moving really positively across the board.
Speaker 11: And the great thing is this is broad based. So
Speaker 11: when we look back at twenty twenty four and we
Speaker 11: look at our portfolio of world class brands, we were
Speaker 11: actually higher mid single digit to mid teens percentage wise
Speaker 11: in our yields, in the revenue we generate for person
Speaker 11: per day across all of our major brands, all of
Speaker 11: our major trades.
Speaker 12: So it's really gratifying the.
Speaker 11: Team, our global team has done a phenomenal job and
Speaker 11: really a shout out to each and every one of
Speaker 11: them from doing what they do.
Speaker 3: Okay, this maybe sounds a little bit stupid, but why
Speaker 3: do you think this is happening?
Speaker 9: I mean, and I'm just curious what is it?
Speaker 3: Tell us attle bit about it and remind us, because
Speaker 3: you do have a portfolio of brands and it reaches
Speaker 3: across different consumers if you will, of your brand. So
Speaker 3: give us an idea of why you think you are
Speaker 3: still seeing kind of record bookings.
Speaker 11: Will need an hour, right, I mean, there's so many reasons.
Speaker 11: You know the principle and I remember I remember being
Speaker 11: on with you a year ago and talking about what
Speaker 11: we'll call the price to experience ratio, and the price
Speaker 11: to experience ratio of a cruise versus the price and
Speaker 11: what you pay for a land.
Speaker 12: Based alternative is nuts, right.
Speaker 11: I mean, the value that you get from a cruise
Speaker 11: for what we provide is night and day to what
Speaker 11: you can get on land. And people are recognizing that,
Speaker 11: and so we are catching a net much wider into
Speaker 11: the general population for people who will now consider cruising
Speaker 11: as a vacation alternative, people who have never cruised before.
Speaker 11: As a matter of fact, in twenty twenty four, we
Speaker 11: had over ten percent more new to cruise than we
Speaker 11: did the prior year, So becoming more mainstream, breaking down myths,
Speaker 11: and that value gap is real. So we can still
Speaker 11: increase our pricing as we've been doing the last few
Speaker 11: years and be an incredible value. And I tell you
Speaker 11: there's so many things that our teams are doing better
Speaker 11: and better every single day, from how we manage the
Speaker 11: revenue curve right, the yield curve between the time we
Speaker 11: launched two and a half years in advance the time
Speaker 11: we sail. Our marketing is amazing, Our brand is doing
Speaker 11: a better, better job of creative marketing, getting in the
Speaker 11: consideration set and then performance marketing and make sure we
Speaker 11: close the deal and get the booking, you name it.
Speaker 11: We could talk about it all day, but everything is
Speaker 11: moving in a positive direction.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: I got to say, Josh, there's so much coming at us,
Speaker 3: and so many individuals and leaders CEOs that we talked
Speaker 3: to say, you know what, We're kind of holding off
Speaker 3: until we get an idea clear picture of what happens
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty five. You are obviously optimistic. You see
Speaker 3: numbers and data in real time in terms of bookings,
Speaker 3: But I am curious about the upcoming White House.
Speaker 9: Is it good, bad, or neutral for your business?
Speaker 11: You know, we had a great relationship with the Trump
Speaker 11: administration the first time around. We had great relationship with
Speaker 11: the Biden team, and I expected that great relationship. We'll
Speaker 11: pick up with President Trump again. So you know, our
Speaker 11: job is to deliver amazing vacation experiences to millions of
Speaker 11: guests a.
Speaker 12: Year around the world.
Speaker 11: That is what we do, and we do it very well,
Speaker 11: and every single year there is something right because we
Speaker 11: are global and the macroeconomy and the geopolitics are what
Speaker 11: they are. When I was with you a year ago today,
Speaker 11: we didn't have Red Sea on the radar screen. The
Speaker 11: Baltimore Bridge hadn't collapsed, you know, hurricanes hadn't hadn't done
Speaker 11: the damage that they did in the United States, government
Speaker 11: elections getting thrown for a loop in Europe like the
Speaker 11: UK and now Germany. None of that was on the
Speaker 11: radar screen and we outperformed our December guidance by seven
Speaker 11: hundred million dollars. Our job is to deliver no matter
Speaker 11: what the world might bring, and we'll continue to do that.
Speaker 3: So I do wonder when you look at twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: what macroeconomic factors, what geopolitical factors concern you the most? Josh,
Speaker 3: you know when you think about the company's twenty twenty
Speaker 3: five performance potential?
Speaker 12: Oh man, you know, sorry'm asking you.
Speaker 11: Yeah, that's all right. I'm not going to single anything out.
Speaker 11: I mean, like I said, at our job is to deliver.
Speaker 11: We deal with whatever the world might bring. We are nimble.
Speaker 11: Our team is amazing at reacting as they need to.
Speaker 12: But more importantly, we are.
Speaker 11: Proactively doing what we need to do to position our
Speaker 11: ships with our guests the right way and delivering on board,
Speaker 11: so the world of turn crises will come and go
Speaker 11: and people will keep cruising.
Speaker 4: You've been President's CEO Chief Climate Officer since August of
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two, so you've been in this position for a.
Speaker 8: Couple of years.
Speaker 4: Relative to the last couple of years, how would you
Speaker 4: describe the health of the American consumer right now? Same, better, worse.
Speaker 12: We're just seeing continued positive momentum.
Speaker 11: So I think it's hard to say anything, but it's
Speaker 11: just as good now as it has been for the
Speaker 11: last few years for us, in particular, given the record
Speaker 11: yields that we're just coming off of and we're building
Speaker 11: on top of that.
Speaker 12: And you've got to remember we're a global company.
Speaker 11: So yes, the United States is the biggest cruise market
Speaker 11: by far, and we're doing incredibly well in the United States,
Speaker 11: but we are also the biggest in the United Kingdom,
Speaker 11: the biggest in Germany, second biggest thing in Italy, second
Speaker 11: biggest in Spain, Brazil.
Speaker 12: So we have an incredible global presence.
Speaker 11: And the fact is economic cycles come and go, prises
Speaker 11: come and go, macroeconomics will flow different times in different
Speaker 11: places around the world. So our portfolio approach of being
Speaker 11: in these phenomenal markets really serves as a great hedge
Speaker 11: for us because things will come in their cycles and
Speaker 11: leave their cycles at different times.
Speaker 4: So, of those geographic markets that you mentioned, even those
Speaker 4: that you didn't mention, where you do operate, where you
Speaker 4: do play, where are you most bullish?
Speaker 12: Where am I not?
Speaker 10: You?
Speaker 11: You know, if you think about cruising right and you
Speaker 11: think about our brands, we're about a third of the market.
Speaker 11: Let's just say, in broad terms, if you take the
Speaker 11: whole cruise market and you put it into a bucket
Speaker 11: with all of the vacation alternatives at the same time,
Speaker 11: we're about two to three percent of the overall vacation market.
Speaker 11: And so how can you not be bullish when we
Speaker 11: are so underpinnished traded as a global industry. I mean,
Speaker 11: it is remarkable what inroads we can make by just
Speaker 11: getting people who have never cruised before to consider cruising.
Speaker 12: I'll tell you what.
Speaker 11: I don't know a Disney strategy anymore than anybody else
Speaker 11: does from the outside. But I do know that they
Speaker 11: talked awful lot lately about reducing the investment in their
Speaker 11: land because they want to build more investment into cruise
Speaker 11: and double the size of their fleet. I think that
Speaker 11: is very, very telling, and I think it's a brilliant idea.
Speaker 9: Okay, and you guys have invested in your fleet.
Speaker 3: And I'm also curious about you know, when I did
Speaker 3: a deep dive on the company and I got off
Speaker 3: at Grand Turk, you guys have a port there, and
Speaker 3: I am curious about these offshore destinations for Carnival travelers.
Speaker 3: How significant is the July twenty twenty five opening of
Speaker 3: your Celebration Key private island destination to the companies full
Speaker 3: your revenue outlook, I am curious about how this moves
Speaker 3: the financial needle, these offshore ports that are yours.
Speaker 9: You know that you guys highlight.
Speaker 11: Yeah, absolutely, They're a critical piece of our strategy. So
Speaker 11: even today without Celebration Key, we've got six jewels in
Speaker 11: and around the Caribbean and we carry We took about
Speaker 11: six and a half million guests to one of our
Speaker 11: destinations in that geography. That's about equal to the rest
Speaker 11: of the industry combined with theirs. On top of this,
Speaker 11: we've got Celebration Key, which is going to be a
Speaker 11: phenomenal guest experience built from the ground up for Carnival
Speaker 11: Cruise Line and their idea of fun and just a
Speaker 11: wonderful guest experience on board, and there's a lot that
Speaker 11: we can go into, but it's going to be phenomenal.
Speaker 12: Now.
Speaker 11: With respect to twenty twenty five, there's really not that
Speaker 11: much of an impact because we don't open until July
Speaker 11: with a handful of cruises and then we build up.
Speaker 11: So for the corporation overall, it's only about five percent
Speaker 11: of our itineraries in twenty five we'll touch Celebration Key.
Speaker 11: That ratchets up to about fifteen percent when we get
Speaker 11: to twenty twenty six. On top of this, we've announced
Speaker 11: that we're doing some major investment in one of our
Speaker 11: other existing destinations, traditionally known as Half Moon Key and
Speaker 11: rebranded relax Away at half Moon Key, because it's a
Speaker 11: different vibe than Celebration Key. It is a beautiful tropical paradise,
Speaker 11: white sand beaches, and what we want you to do
Speaker 11: there is lean into the beauty and the pristiness of
Speaker 11: that location and the crystal blue waters and relax and
Speaker 11: enjoy yourself and unwind. And we're going to be able
Speaker 11: to marry these two types of experiences on the same itinerary,
Speaker 11: so you get the Idyllic and the Ultimate Beach Days
Speaker 11: across those portfolios.
Speaker 4: Our thanks to Josh Weinstein, president and CEO and chief
Speaker 4: Climate officer over at Carnival and.
Speaker 3: Tim, we had another development in the leisure and hospitality space,
Speaker 3: and this had to do with the largest US ski resort.
Speaker 3: What's been their time of year when everybody's out there skiing.
Speaker 3: We're talking about Veil Resorts. Shares did bounce around this
Speaker 3: past week because you did see a bunch of workers
Speaker 3: ski patrollers who were out on not working because they
Speaker 3: wanted a new contract, they wanted more money.
Speaker 4: I've been trying to get you to talk about this
Speaker 4: story for close to two weeks. We're finally talking about it,
Speaker 4: which is great, and it's great that the I think
Speaker 4: for a lot of people that this strike has been
Speaker 4: put to an end because I don't know if you
Speaker 4: saw on social media, but back in late December, December
Speaker 4: twenty seventh is when this strike began. You saw this
Speaker 4: playing out. You saw videos of long lift lines, You
Speaker 4: saw big parts of Park City Resort closed as a
Speaker 4: result of them not having the ski patrollers to actually
Speaker 4: patrol and do avalanche control in these areas. And it
Speaker 4: comes at a time when it's one of the most
Speaker 4: crowded times because people are out for the new year,
Speaker 4: they're out for the holidays, they're traveling with their families.
Speaker 4: They're spending, in some cases, Carol, tens of thousands of
Speaker 4: dollars to take their families to this mountain resort, and
Speaker 4: they're not having a good experience.
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of money, I mean the Park City Ski
Speaker 3: Professional Ski Patrol Association. They did claim victory in this battle,
Speaker 3: saying in a statement that Veil Resorts, which owns Parks
Speaker 3: Mountain Resort, acceded to its key demands, including a two
Speaker 3: dollars an hour base pay increase and raise for some
Speaker 3: ski patrollers. So when all right, you're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 3: Business Week coming up, what the next generation of people
Speaker 3: can expect during their lifetimes, you might want to sit
Speaker 3: down when we hear this conversation.
Speaker 8: Okay, you know gen z. Yeah, there's such thing. There's
Speaker 8: Gen Alpha, which I've learned about. Yeah, thanks to this interview.
Speaker 4: And what about Generation beta?
Speaker 8: Their next? That's next. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live each
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Speaker 4: Okay, we know about the Greatest Generation. Check the Silent Generation.
Speaker 3: Check.
Speaker 4: Do you know there's someone there's a generation before the
Speaker 4: Greatest Generation? What is it they are called?
Speaker 9: Are you serious?
Speaker 8: Yeah? The Lost Generation?
Speaker 13: Oh, I do know that.
Speaker 9: I do know that.
Speaker 8: And then I guess we forget about everyone before that, right, And.
Speaker 9: Then there's right that's neither here, sorry everybody. And then
Speaker 9: there's the massive.
Speaker 4: Boomers boomers, Gen X, Gen X.
Speaker 9: Millennials yep, Gen Z yep. Thenwhere else?
Speaker 8: Then it gets a little complicated.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Gen Alpha that's twenty thirteen to mid twenty twenties. Okay,
Speaker 4: those are my kids, I guess, Okay. And then now
Speaker 4: that we're in the mid twenty twenties, it's time for
Speaker 4: the next generation. We're talking Generation Beta, okay. And they're
Speaker 4: born from twenty twenty five to twenty thirty nine, so
Speaker 4: most of them aren't even alive yet.
Speaker 9: All right, So we're waiting, but we're wait objecting a.
Speaker 8: Few of them. What they're going to be like opy
Speaker 8: birthday to them.
Speaker 4: Despite that, PGIM set out to figure out what this
Speaker 4: generation would look like. They interviewed doctors, scientists, parents, and
Speaker 4: more two thousand Americans to get predictions for the future
Speaker 4: of Generation Beta.
Speaker 3: David Blanchett is managing Director, portfolio manager, and head of
Speaker 3: Retirement Research at PGIM. He joins us from Lexington, Kentucky. David,
Speaker 3: Happy New Year. Great to have you here with Tim
Speaker 3: and myself. So tell us about this project, because we
Speaker 3: really haven't talked about this next generation, Generation Beta. So
Speaker 3: tell us what you set out to do.
Speaker 14: Well, you know, first you all kind of introduce this
Speaker 14: idea of generations, and you mentioned baby Boomers. They're actually
Speaker 14: the first generation to kind of have a name. It
Speaker 14: was essentially a group of individuals at a certain age
Speaker 14: and right, so we've kind of moved forward to the
Speaker 14: time you mentioned the Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, you know,
Speaker 14: the Alphas. Now we have the Beta. So everyone born
Speaker 14: on January first, twenty twenty five for the next fifteen
Speaker 14: years is going to be part of Generation Alpha. And
Speaker 14: obviously there's still a lot of those babies to come.
Speaker 14: But you know, we were curious, like, what what might
Speaker 14: the future hole, like what are we looking at in
Speaker 14: terms of this newest generation? So, as you all mentioned,
Speaker 14: a pretty exhaustive survey, you know, reviewing kind of expert opinions,
Speaker 14: surveying two thousand Americans, and lots of interesting perspectives people
Speaker 14: have about you know, things like life in general, retirement, longevity,
Speaker 14: just lots of interesting projections about the future.
Speaker 4: I mean, don't you think if you went back in
Speaker 4: time I'm just trying to figure out a corollary here
Speaker 4: that makes sense. But if you went back in time,
Speaker 4: you know, to the to the nineteen seventies and said
Speaker 4: to folks, what do you think people born you know,
Speaker 4: in the nineteen eighties to the two thousands would experience
Speaker 4: in life Like they're not going to be talking about
Speaker 4: smartphones and you know, AI, they're going to be talking
Speaker 4: about flying cars because that's what we thought would happen. Right,
Speaker 4: There's this disconnect between predictions and what actually happens, right well.
Speaker 9: And so I think that that's why like this is.
Speaker 14: I think this is informative, it's useful, but it's really
Speaker 14: difficult to think about what's going to happen in the future.
Speaker 12: Right.
Speaker 14: So you know, for example, you know, one of the
Speaker 14: questions in the survey was like, what would you call
Speaker 14: this generation? And you just said it a second ago,
Speaker 14: but like the most common nickname was Generation AI, Like
Speaker 14: even even three or four years ago, that probably isn't
Speaker 14: the name that we'd used to describe this later, this
Speaker 14: latest cohort. So I do think there is a lot
Speaker 14: of things that are changing, But to me, like this
Speaker 14: idea of change was probably the biggest theme in the survey,
Speaker 14: where there is lots of expectations where you know, kind
Speaker 14: of every facet of raising children, of saving for retirement,
Speaker 14: of planning for healthcare people, partial change in the future,
Speaker 14: especially for this Generation Beta.
Speaker 3: What about in terms of I'm really curious about how
Speaker 3: we work right here? We are four years off the pandemic.
Speaker 3: We thought it was going to be transformational, and I
Speaker 3: guess for some who are still working from home it is,
Speaker 3: but there's a lot more people who are being pressured
Speaker 3: to come back to the office. How do you think
Speaker 3: about this generation or what did you hear about how
Speaker 3: they think they will be working?
Speaker 14: Sure, so eighty three percent of respondents thought that retirement
Speaker 14: willok completely different for Generation Beta, And well why is that?
Speaker 14: It's because there's idea of many retirements and this idea
Speaker 14: that as we kind of evolve through the workforce, we're
Speaker 14: going to be changing changing jobs. So, you know, other
Speaker 14: stats would be that seventy four percent of people thought
Speaker 14: that Generation BETA would work less than five days a week.
Speaker 14: Eighty percent of respondents thought that people would have three
Speaker 14: distinct career paths over time. So I think that there
Speaker 14: is this kind of emerging perspective that this idea of
Speaker 14: having kind of one job and one profession for you know,
Speaker 14: thirty or forty years, isn't the future of work based
Speaker 14: upon how things are changing, David?
Speaker 3: Is that because we're going to be living to one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty, So yeah, we're going to have these
Speaker 3: many retirements, We're going to have these many you know,
Speaker 3: transformations in our careers.
Speaker 14: So I think that people will be living longer, you know,
Speaker 14: So I focus on retirement research, and I don't think
Speaker 14: we're going to have most people living to one hundred
Speaker 14: and fifty, but we are going to see improvements in longevity, right,
Speaker 14: And those improvements kind of radically create complexity around me
Speaker 14: on how we plan for retirement. And so to me,
Speaker 14: it isn't all that surprising that there's this perspective that
Speaker 14: you know, generation of Beta isn't going to retire right
Speaker 14: to the extent that we can. We can, you know,
Speaker 14: create jobs and create abilities to work longer. Lots of
Speaker 14: folks that want to retire. Actually, personally, I don't love
Speaker 14: the word retirement out the word financial independence. What we
Speaker 14: want to be able to do is is to save
Speaker 14: money and eventually stopped working. And I think that's where
Speaker 14: we're seeing this perspective around Generation Beta, where they're going
Speaker 14: to be this in theory, this group of individuals that
Speaker 14: that doesn't have the same retirement to everyone else. That
Speaker 14: being said, you know, it's thought that blows my mind
Speaker 14: is that they're not going to be you know, age
Speaker 14: seventy until you're twenty ninety five. So retirement in seventy
Speaker 14: years is going to be very different than it is today.
Speaker 4: To be young born in twenty thirty nine, sure would
Speaker 4: be nice already, right already, I'm thinking about it. One
Speaker 4: thing that I was surprised and you're reminding me about
Speaker 4: this is in a history class in college I remember studying.
Speaker 4: I believe it was in like the nineteen twenties, maybe
Speaker 4: the rise of leisure and the fact that people had,
Speaker 4: they weren't stuck in the fields, you know, twelve hours
Speaker 4: a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty
Speaker 4: five days a year for the first time ever. So
Speaker 4: there are certain things started happening, and I could be
Speaker 4: getting the dates wrong, and I know I'm over generalizing here,
Speaker 4: but I think if they were to look at our
Speaker 4: lives now, they'd say that, oh wow, those people never work.
Speaker 4: But when are we going to have like a four
Speaker 4: day work week or a three day work week, because
Speaker 4: automation is going to be doing such.
Speaker 8: A good job.
Speaker 3: Are you asking for them or for you?
Speaker 8: I'm asking for me.
Speaker 4: One of the markets going to only be open four
Speaker 4: days a week, and then we only have to work
Speaker 4: four days a week.
Speaker 8: That's what I want to know.
Speaker 14: So, you know, seventy four percent of respondence in the
Speaker 14: survey thought that Generation BETA would work less than five
Speaker 14: days a week. And so I think, again, there is
Speaker 14: this idea of work becoming more fluid versus this kind
Speaker 14: of structured nine to five thing. Obviously, we saw, you know,
Speaker 14: during COVID, a rise of remote work people and not
Speaker 14: going to be in the office through their jobs, and
Speaker 14: a lot of companies going to pull people back into
Speaker 14: the office. I think that I think that there is
Speaker 14: this emerging perspective that this requirement to be you know,
Speaker 14: in a at a desk in an office five days
Speaker 14: a week. It's not gone, but it's kind of slowly
Speaker 14: evolving into something else that is a lot more flexible.
Speaker 9: One thing I want to talk about is healthcare.
Speaker 3: We talked about longevity, and I feel like there's a
Speaker 3: bunch of things here in terms of your findings. Half
Speaker 3: of adults believing that cancer will be cured by gen
Speaker 3: beta percent predicting that gen beas don't have individualized healthcare
Speaker 3: based on their DNA, And I feel like we continually
Speaker 3: are increasingly tim are having conversations about individualized medicine. Talk
Speaker 3: to us a little bit about more about that, because
Speaker 3: it's an incredible cost to society, it's an incredible cost
Speaker 3: to individuals that we still haven't figured out some of
Speaker 3: these major ailments. So pull that together for us.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean, I think that that's kind of an
Speaker 14: optimistic perspective. You know, I too saw the fifty one
Speaker 14: percent stat of thinking that generation made would cure cancer.
Speaker 14: That I think that that to me what resonates looking
Speaker 14: across the response is just this idea again of kind
Speaker 14: of like the evolving state of healthcare. I think the
Speaker 14: idea of personalized medicine. You know, there's there's some questions
Speaker 14: about like AI things like that. I think that I
Speaker 14: think the way that the individuals can receive you know,
Speaker 14: treatment is going to change, and I think that that
Speaker 14: was a key theme among the responders in the survey.
Speaker 14: So healthcare, I think that people think it's going to
Speaker 14: evolve in the future and radically affect generation made in
Speaker 14: terms of how they enjoy your life and also when
Speaker 14: they eventually.
Speaker 4: Retire, okay, get better, get to work. I was kind
Speaker 4: of hoping cancer would be cured before then.
Speaker 3: Fingers crossed. I would love to see that. The other
Speaker 3: thing is just one more stat on all of this.
Speaker 3: Fifty nine percent think AI artificial intelligence will be able
Speaker 3: to predict and prevent health issues before symptoms appear. And
Speaker 3: you know, it's just as you know, we have spent
Speaker 3: yere in the investment world the last two years talking
Speaker 3: about nothing but AI, generative AI, large language models, and
Speaker 3: so on.
Speaker 9: In the impact.
Speaker 3: Although I think people are thinking it's going to take
Speaker 3: a while for all of this to pay off and
Speaker 3: be put to work.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the questions was,
Speaker 14: like syncior centers wonted to think that AI.
Speaker 5: Is going to raise their kids.
Speaker 14: And so I think that that there's a lot of
Speaker 14: a lot of a lot of positive expectations in here
Speaker 14: around artificial intelligence and how its role in terms of education,
Speaker 14: in terms of the role of kind of helping individuals
Speaker 14: have better personalized experiences based upon their unique preferences.
Speaker 4: I'm wondering about technology because and the folks you interviewed, uh,
Speaker 4: how did their how did their answers very based on
Speaker 4: who you talk to you because you talk to doctors,
Speaker 4: you talk to parents, you talk to technologists, you talk
Speaker 4: to scientists. How did they think differently about different generations?
Speaker 14: Well, you know, it's funny, you know, one of the
Speaker 14: differences that I noticed with the responses was like the
Speaker 14: like the older generations, like boomers, we're just optimistic about
Speaker 14: like the the the possibilities the future of the generation beta.
Speaker 14: You know, beyond that, you know, if you look at
Speaker 14: just like maybe at a higher level, if you look
Speaker 14: at things like like like regrets and and the things
Speaker 14: that that that people would change based upon their lifestyles,
Speaker 14: you know, you have things like like saving for retirement
Speaker 14: and spending time with kids like that, like, you know,
Speaker 14: those those were very different for older Americans versus younger Americans.
Speaker 14: So a lot of the questions I didn't see big
Speaker 14: differences in in terms of you know, looking at like boomers, millennials,
Speaker 14: gen X, but you do see it in terms of
Speaker 14: things people say, well, like what do I wish I
Speaker 14: had done differently looking back on my life?
Speaker 3: Hey, Having said that, I was kind of drawn to
Speaker 3: a statistics that you shared with our producer and our team.
Speaker 3: The people surveyed estimate that Generation BETA will need approximately
Speaker 3: one point eighty eight million dollars to sustain in retirement.
Speaker 3: That seems like a low number.
Speaker 14: It's well, I think it's all it's all relative. It's
Speaker 14: it's a big number. But like I said, I mean,
Speaker 14: we're talking about people retiring, you know, seventy sixty five
Speaker 14: years from now. I think that I think there are
Speaker 14: some really important things here, Like there was one I
Speaker 14: think useful stat that like eighty percent, you know, think
Speaker 14: that Generation BETA should, like in a perfect world, start
Speaker 14: saving for retirement as soon as the child's worn And
Speaker 14: that's probably not realistic. I think most you know, I
Speaker 14: have four alphas myself, no betas, and that's that's like
Speaker 14: retirement's tough, right, And so I think that that one
Speaker 14: thing that will make retirement tough is we talked about
Speaker 14: early or is this increasing longevity. But I also don't
Speaker 14: love that word, Like I said, retirement. I think that
Speaker 14: I think that it's going to be more possible for
Speaker 14: us to do things that are economically additive at later ages, right,
Speaker 14: and and I mean along those lines, like you know,
Speaker 14: one of the important stats in the report was the
Speaker 14: number one regret of all respondents was they didn't save
Speaker 14: enough for retirement. Okay, what's really interesting is is that
Speaker 14: is never the highest regret of any of the generations.
Speaker 14: So like not saving for retirement is this kind of
Speaker 14: regret that kind of echoes across generations, but it's never
Speaker 14: the biggest thing.
Speaker 7: Like if you look at like like.
Speaker 14: Boomers for example, they wanted to you know, spend more
Speaker 14: time with their loved ones and take care of their
Speaker 14: health things like that. So that I think that, you know,
Speaker 14: we like, there is that big number, that one point
Speaker 14: eight eight million, But I think what's important is is
Speaker 14: that is you know, things like not saving for retirement,
Speaker 14: you know was actually a bigger focus among among younger respondents.
Speaker 13: But they're worried about.
Speaker 14: Like everything, like like they have just have like regret
Speaker 14: schalol or or as individuals get older, those regrets spade away.
Speaker 14: But to your question and point, retirement is very expensive.
Speaker 14: If we start living to age one hundred and ten
Speaker 14: hundred and twenty, it's even more expensive than today.
Speaker 3: But is it also something that's more top of mind
Speaker 3: maybe for younger generation because it's not like when my
Speaker 3: dad retired and there was pension and VA benefits and
Speaker 3: social security and investments. I mean, there was all these
Speaker 3: different pools and it's a very different environment for a
Speaker 3: lot of workers nowadays.
Speaker 13: What it is.
Speaker 14: I mean, so we've got I think, you know, like personally,
Speaker 14: I don't love the fact that the trust fund for
Speaker 14: Social Security is projected to go bankrupt in about about
Speaker 14: ten years. It creates a lot of uncertainty around around
Speaker 14: like the bedrock of our retirement being there. But also
Speaker 14: like like we've we've entered a world of personal responsibility
Speaker 14: for retirement savings. You've got to save in your in
Speaker 14: your four oh and K and your I ory things
Speaker 14: like that, and I think that that's a really good
Speaker 14: way to help individuals accumulate money for retirement, but you
Speaker 14: need to make sure they have access to a plan.
Speaker 14: But you know, kind of a bigger problem to some
Speaker 14: extent is Okay, you get to retirement and you have
Speaker 14: I don't know, half a million dollars as it's like
Speaker 14: now what like you train these people to say for
Speaker 14: thirty or forty years, and all of a sudden you've
Speaker 14: got to figure out how you're going to spend down
Speaker 14: that money, and you don't know how long you're gonna live,
Speaker 14: what the markets are going to do, and associreatd bankrupt
Speaker 14: and so I think that we have we have a
Speaker 14: pretty good system, but it places a lot of responsibility
Speaker 14: on the shoulders of the average American. And that's where
Speaker 14: you know, having help, having an advisor, using certain tools resources.
Speaker 14: I think that's really becoming more valuable because you only
Speaker 14: have one shot at retirement. You can't screw it up,
Speaker 14: and so getting help to figure out what the best
Speaker 14: thing to do is is just becoming I think more
Speaker 14: important for all Americas.
Speaker 4: Hey, are you concerned at all about a lack of
Speaker 4: Generation beta actually appearing? Because childcare has gotten so expensive
Speaker 4: and it's so expensive to have kids. I know, I
Speaker 4: don't need to tell you how much you have to
Speaker 4: say for college, considering you have four of them. But
Speaker 4: it's just gotten so expensive. And I know my generation
Speaker 4: fewer and fear people are having kids. Is that a concern?
Speaker 2: It is?
Speaker 7: And so it was really interesting.
Speaker 14: Is one of the questions they asked was, you know,
Speaker 14: among those who aren't going to be having children, like,
Speaker 14: why is that? And so my wife is a veterinarian
Speaker 14: and and you know, one of the top reasons was
Speaker 14: people are viewing their pets as a child. And you know,
Speaker 14: if you follow this trend in other countries, you see
Speaker 14: this in other places where individuals are kind of substituting
Speaker 14: having kids or having pets. And the number one sided
Speaker 14: reason often is just the costs and the time it
Speaker 14: takes to actually raise children.
Speaker 3: All right, So we've just got a couple of minutes
Speaker 3: left here, and I am curious with all that is
Speaker 3: said and done, all that we've talked about. You know
Speaker 3: what is kind of top of mind for you guys,
Speaker 3: pigim you guys invest like, I don't know, what are
Speaker 3: you thinking about this next generation, this beta generation?
Speaker 14: So you know, to be perfectly honest, Like, I'm not
Speaker 14: incredibly worried about about one year one year old saving
Speaker 14: for retirement, right, I think that it's gonna be it's
Speaker 14: gonna be an issue. I think, I think what i
Speaker 14: I'm what I'm I'm more focused on as individuals who
Speaker 14: are investing for today. So I spent a ton of
Speaker 14: time thinking about, like, how do we create solutions for
Speaker 14: individuals who around retirement, and and to me, it does
Speaker 14: get to this earlier point just about where you know,
Speaker 14: everyone's retirement is their own right, and for better or
Speaker 14: for worse, we all have to worry about the markets
Speaker 14: misbehaving about living a long time, and it's just it's
Speaker 14: just really really complicated. So I think, you know, at
Speaker 14: a high level, the job of all of us needs
Speaker 14: to be when we're young to make good financial choices,
Speaker 14: to save in our four one K and invest well.
Speaker 14: But but but the decisions you've got to make when
Speaker 14: you get closer to retirement just are really really complex.
Speaker 14: And you know, I'd like to think that things are
Speaker 14: gonna get easier for Generation BETA.
Speaker 13: But it's probably the opposite.
Speaker 14: And so hopefully, you know, we can learn from a
Speaker 14: lot of the mistakes for better or for worse that
Speaker 14: individuals make today so that future generations as they retire
Speaker 14: have things a bit easy.
Speaker 8: I did a college calculator while I was away.
Speaker 9: On break and oh, for what it's going to cost
Speaker 9: you for your kids?
Speaker 8: Not pretty?
Speaker 9: What's the number you came up with?
Speaker 4: More than six hundred thousand dollars for a private if
Speaker 4: you want to go to private, sco one or for
Speaker 4: both for one for one?
Speaker 9: Good luck?
Speaker 3: Honey, all right, David, we got to leave it there. Hey, listen,
Speaker 3: thanks so much. This was fun, interesting and enlightening. David Blanchett,
Speaker 3: Managing director, portfolio manager and head of Retirement Research at PGIM,
Speaker 3: joining us from Lexington, Kentucky. No, like, that's one of
Speaker 3: the things we talk about all the time, right, the
Speaker 3: cost of college.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's uh, it just keeps up.
Speaker 9: And up and up. Intimidate.
Speaker 8: Well, see if you can keep going up and up
Speaker 8: and up. I know twenty years ago you were probably saying.
Speaker 9: That, yeah exactly.
Speaker 12: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know that I ever thought it, but we've
Speaker 3: talked so many times, like over the years about how
Speaker 3: it's been outpacing inflation and just continues to do.
Speaker 2: So you're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch
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Speaker 3: In our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg
Speaker 3: Business Week, including the Perfect Guest for Foodies, we speak
Speaker 3: to an award winning taste tester on fine tooting one's
Speaker 3: palate so we can really really learn how to savor
Speaker 3: that flavor.
Speaker 4: Plus Mark Zuckerberg rocking a nine hundred one thousand dollars watch. Yeah,
Speaker 4: that's like not that much money for him. Two hundred
Speaker 4: and fifteen billion dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's worth just a hundred million dollars.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Coffee machines that'll change your morning rituals and non alcoholic apparentiefs.
Speaker 4: This spruce up dry January all courtesy of our team
Speaker 4: over at Bloomberg Pursuits.
Speaker 3: First up this hour, It's a big luxury item that
Speaker 3: many of us probably won't get to experience in our lifetimes,
Speaker 3: and that is owning a private jet.
Speaker 4: Owning a private jet, it's costly, it requires regular maintenance,
Speaker 4: You got to hire, you got to pay that flight crew.
Speaker 4: You've got hangar fees. There's of course insurance and other costs.
Speaker 8: Those cost Carol.
Speaker 4: They can exceed a million dollars per jet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a lot. So what if you don't have
Speaker 3: to buy the whole plane to fly private. That's where
Speaker 3: fraction jet ownership comes in.
Speaker 4: Michael Silvestro is CEO of the fractional private jet firm
Speaker 4: flex Jet. It's a division of the privately held Directional
Speaker 4: Aviation Capital. It provides fractional aircraft shares and leases as
Speaker 4: well as jet cards. Flexjet owns, operates and maintains over
Speaker 4: three hundred aircraft.
Speaker 13: So, just like everyone else, that pandemic brought travel to
Speaker 13: a halt. But coming out of the pandemic, we've seen
Speaker 13: a couple macro trends. First of all, people who had
Speaker 13: the ability financial wherewithal to fly privately before the pandemic
Speaker 13: who chose not to are all in now convenience.
Speaker 9: They started and they've stayed with it.
Speaker 13: Absolutely. Our retention rates of those that have come in
Speaker 13: after COVID are running ninety seven ninety eight percent. So
Speaker 13: if you have a sensus, just to give your sets
Speaker 13: of metrics, we were on a very very strong run
Speaker 13: pre COVID coming out of the pandemic. If you look
Speaker 13: at our book of business today from where we were
Speaker 13: five years ago, it's up sixty percent.
Speaker 4: Wow, what do we talk? Who is flying? I know, democrats.
Speaker 4: Demographics have shifted quite a bit for you guys in
Speaker 4: recent years. You're seeing more and more young people. Yeah,
Speaker 4: now become part of the program. People in their forties.
Speaker 4: What's the demographic looking.
Speaker 13: Like, Yeah, timm so coming the last The macro trend
Speaker 13: is younger, bigger, and longer. So a generation ago, a
Speaker 13: man or a woman would wait till maybe late fifties
Speaker 13: sixties to start flying privately. Today young men and women
Speaker 13: in their forties are all in. Secondly, they're not starting
Speaker 13: with small airplanes, you know, they're not starting small and
Speaker 13: moving their way up the food chain. They're in on
Speaker 13: nd supermit and heavy jets, and they're going all over
Speaker 13: the world. So the number of transatlantic crossings we did
Speaker 13: this summer to Europe were unbelievable. So people are just
Speaker 13: going everywhere.
Speaker 3: Remind us and our pursuits team off and taps into this,
Speaker 3: but remind us of kind of the financials in order
Speaker 3: to do to be a customer on one of your jets.
Speaker 13: Sure, well, depends upon it really all depends upon your missions,
Speaker 13: which can be easily defined as where do you go
Speaker 13: off and with how many people, and that kind of
Speaker 13: helps us create a profile of you and what airplane
Speaker 13: and services would best serve your missions. So you know,
Speaker 13: if you take a mid sized airplane a preet five
Speaker 13: hundred for member air for instance, for US, the buy
Speaker 13: in on a whole aircraft basis is about twenty million dollars,
Speaker 13: So you end up saying, hey, I want to fly
Speaker 13: one hundred hours a year, So that's about a two
Speaker 13: and a half million dollar check, and then your management
Speaker 13: fee and then your hourly rates roll up to for
Speaker 13: one hundred hours, you're talking about not quite a million
Speaker 13: dollars a year an operating costs.
Speaker 4: So when you say fractional jet, you're actually owning a
Speaker 4: piece of the jet. Yeah, you know, Timothy, that's different
Speaker 4: than other fronts.
Speaker 13: It is. And the model for us is is that
Speaker 13: we own and operate over three hundred airplanes. But when
Speaker 13: you buy a share, you're actually purchasing an undivided interest
Speaker 13: of a serial numbered aircraft that is part of our fleet.
Speaker 13: So as an individual owner, you can depreciate it, you
Speaker 13: can finance it, but then you allow other flexjet owners
Speaker 13: to fly on your plane and vice versa. So the
Speaker 13: master interchange agreement allows the operating metrics to work.
Speaker 8: So let's go with that.
Speaker 4: With that embryer two and a half million dollars buy in,
Speaker 4: and then operating costs that are associated with it, what
Speaker 4: are those typically?
Speaker 13: Usually well, for one hundred hours a year, it's you know,
Speaker 13: by the time you do a management fee in an
Speaker 13: hourly rate, it ends up to be about eight to
Speaker 13: nine thousand dollars an hour.
Speaker 4: So to make this it's you know, it's some people
Speaker 4: would say it's it's hard to make it worth it.
Speaker 4: You know, no matter how much you fly, it's about convenience,
Speaker 4: it's about comfort, it's about time not spent at you know,
Speaker 4: Newark Airport or whatever. Who's the typical profile in terms
Speaker 4: of like net worth that that make this choice.
Speaker 13: Yeah, so there's really two i'd say major constituents that
Speaker 13: fly ultra high net worth individuals that are using it
Speaker 13: for a combination of business and pleasures.
Speaker 4: These are people thirty million dollars and above. Typically networks.
Speaker 4: We think about network that's a.
Speaker 13: Good benchmark and then what we've seen recently is a
Speaker 13: lot of corporate flight departments are using fractional flexjet to
Speaker 13: supplement their own airplanes. So they're not going away. People
Speaker 13: are still going to have aircraft in their flight department,
Speaker 13: but rather than buying the fifth or sixth or seventh one,
Speaker 13: it's a smarter way to deploy capital where you just
Speaker 13: engage in a fractional share in addition to the airplanes
Speaker 13: that you fly yourselves.
Speaker 9: All right, so who's using your jet card?
Speaker 13: The jet card? So we have a very robust business
Speaker 13: that we own in the family of companies called Sentient Jet.
Speaker 13: So you buy a block of twenty five hours, it's
Speaker 13: like a big gift card in the sky, right and so,
Speaker 13: and you buy them in a category of an airplane,
Speaker 13: not necessarily a specific aircraft type. So that would just
Speaker 13: be for someone who's an occasional user. That would average
Speaker 13: only about twenty to twenty five hours a year.
Speaker 9: Okay, so not too much.
Speaker 4: And would you see but would you see a person
Speaker 4: person the profile of that person is not an ultra
Speaker 4: high net worth individual. Maybe they have many millions of dollars,
Speaker 4: but they're not actually buying a two and a half
Speaker 4: million dollars share right in an aircraft.
Speaker 13: They would be I would give you two examples. The
Speaker 13: difference would be perhaps they don't have the financial wherewithal
Speaker 13: or the net worth that a fractional customer would, But
Speaker 13: they might and they would just only buy a jet
Speaker 13: card because of their frequency of use. So you could
Speaker 13: be very, very wealthy. But you just hey, I have
Speaker 13: two or three trips a year, so it's not worth
Speaker 13: me investing in a fractional share and make that commitment.
Speaker 13: You just do a jet guard.
Speaker 9: What's the biggest business for you, guys? Where do you
Speaker 9: make the most money?
Speaker 13: Oh, fractional so flexjets model, which is very you know,
Speaker 13: there's all these ways to get on board. But the
Speaker 13: beauty of the fractional model is our recurring revenue. So
Speaker 13: once you're in the family, once you've bought or leased
Speaker 13: your share, you're paying a management feed. Just like belonging
Speaker 13: to a country club. Whether you go for dinner or
Speaker 13: play golf, you still expect a level of service when
Speaker 13: you show up. You want the greens mode. You want
Speaker 13: a wonderful menu. Same thing for us to deploy and
Speaker 13: to have on the ready three hundred airplanes around the
Speaker 13: world that takes a significant infrastructure.
Speaker 9: It also takes pilots.
Speaker 3: And one of the things that we've talked about a lot,
Speaker 3: I feel like tim with people in the aviation industry
Speaker 3: is the shortage of pilots. How are you dealing with that?
Speaker 3: And tell us what color you can give us?
Speaker 13: All, Well, that's a wonderful question. I would tell you that.
Speaker 13: One of the things I'm the most proud of is
Speaker 13: that the Flexjet pilots on their own voted they when
Speaker 13: we bought the business, they were unionized, and they voted
Speaker 13: to have an atwill relationship with senior management as opposed
Speaker 13: to being represented by a union. So we have from
Speaker 13: the get go. Well that was about six or seven
Speaker 13: years ago. Okay, so we have a wonderful relationship with
Speaker 13: our pilots. A couple things. Number one, we are committed
Speaker 13: to having the highest paidlots in the sky. We also
Speaker 13: have we're very we really try to operate on a
Speaker 13: familial culture and so we end up treating people with
Speaker 13: great respect and care and we just we just we
Speaker 13: just we just know how to treat people.
Speaker 8: Where do your pilots come from? All over?
Speaker 13: They a lot out of the military.
Speaker 8: So those are on the younger side. Do you have
Speaker 8: folks who retired from the big airlines?
Speaker 13: We do, not a lot, but you know, because.
Speaker 8: There's mandatary sixty five.
Speaker 13: So I just flew with a guy that had been
Speaker 13: with us less than a year. He was sixty six
Speaker 13: years old, incredibly fit and competent, and so we're happy
Speaker 13: to have him.
Speaker 9: Is it hard to find them though? That's what I
Speaker 9: just kind of go.
Speaker 13: Next to the defance apply, Well, here's something else we did.
Speaker 13: You know, we were noticing what our attrition rates were,
Speaker 13: and we noticed a couple of years ago. Because one
Speaker 13: of the things that speaks to our culture is we
Speaker 13: don't have a training contract, so we take you at
Speaker 13: your word. So if you apply and get accepted as
Speaker 13: a job as a pilot for Flexhut, we don't we
Speaker 13: train you. We invest the money in you, and you
Speaker 13: are not obligated at all. There's no there's no payback
Speaker 13: in case you leave us. So a lot of people
Speaker 13: were negatively profiling in us, coming, getting trained and then
Speaker 13: leaving after about two years or so. So one of
Speaker 13: the counter intuitive things we did was we raised our minimums.
Speaker 13: So while everybody was in the face of a pilot shortage,
Speaker 13: you would think, well, you'd lower your minimums more people.
Speaker 13: We were raised ours to three thousand hours as a minimum.
Speaker 4: So that's what you need to have under your belt
Speaker 4: in order to become a flexjet pilot.
Speaker 13: Only fifteen hundred hours, so twice as much as what
Speaker 13: the industry calls for. And what we have attracted in
Speaker 13: the last two or three years since we've done this
Speaker 13: is someone who's more career minded that they want to
Speaker 13: come to flexjet because they appreciate the culture, the compensation,
Speaker 13: the work rules, the environment, and our retention rates had
Speaker 13: plummeted since.
Speaker 4: Where were they going when they were leaving to the airlines.
Speaker 4: What do you find when when somebody who owns a
Speaker 4: fraction of a jet wants to use that jet, but
Speaker 4: then somebody else is using it.
Speaker 8: Well, that's the beauty.
Speaker 13: Of the model. That's not their problem, that's my problem.
Speaker 9: Does it happen a lot?
Speaker 13: No, No, we end up having this the model. So
Speaker 13: we as a company, we own about twenty percent of
Speaker 13: our fleet ourselves. It's called core fleet, so we don't
Speaker 13: commit out about one out of every five planes, and
Speaker 13: that's what we need to avoid.
Speaker 3: What you just asked me, can you use data AI
Speaker 3: or something to help you figure out kind of what.
Speaker 9: We're just curious.
Speaker 13: Yeah, you know, we're still We have a very sophisticated
Speaker 13: scheduling program that we created ourselves, but then we also
Speaker 13: add very experienced schedulers that look at the board and
Speaker 13: say how we move things around to make sure that
Speaker 13: we take care of our customers.
Speaker 9: I can only imagine there must be like a room
Speaker 9: or I don't know.
Speaker 13: How it is so Actually, no, it is a room.
Speaker 13: It's a beautiful, brand new, just year old Global Commands
Speaker 13: that we built in Cleveland, Ohio, which is our headquarters
Speaker 13: where we have visibility into our entire fleet around the world.
Speaker 9: Pretty cool stuff. Mike, thank you so much.
Speaker 13: Thank you for having me very much, very Christmas.
Speaker 11: To both here.
Speaker 9: Yeah, look forward to talking again in the new year.
Speaker 13: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Mike Selvestro, Chief executive Officer, a Flexjet joining us right
Speaker 3: here at our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio.
Speaker 9: We love talking.
Speaker 8: Play.
Speaker 1: This is the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live each
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Speaker 1: listen live on Amazon Alexa from our Flagship New York station.
Speaker 1: Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty, Carol.
Speaker 4: I don't know about you, but when I'm giving gifts
Speaker 4: these days, I kind of like to give people things they.
Speaker 8: Can eat or drink.
Speaker 3: I love doing that too, our Bloomber appreciate you want
Speaker 3: to get something that you can drink or eat.
Speaker 13: I do especially eat eat.
Speaker 4: Like when you brought cookies last week. That's right to
Speaker 4: everybody in the office who was here.
Speaker 8: That was kind of fun. She brought seven seven different types.
Speaker 9: Of at least seven different kinds. Yeah, and I didn't even
Speaker 9: make them.
Speaker 8: All like they were so good and you're still thinking
Speaker 8: about those.
Speaker 3: Well, things you can taste. That is something that Mandy
Speaker 3: Naeglich is her specialty. She's a writer and consultant working
Speaker 3: in the beverage and travel space. She's also the author
Speaker 3: of How to Taste, a Guide to Discovering flavor and
Speaker 3: Savoring Life. Welcome to Grace, So great to have you here.
Speaker 3: Tell us about Wait, your certification that makes you kind
Speaker 3: of an expert when it comes to taste.
Speaker 10: You've got a book, Yes, got a book, and I
Speaker 10: do have several certifications. I actually I am a certified taster,
Speaker 10: which means I can taste all different specialty compounds. But
Speaker 10: I'm also a ciserone, which is a certified beer taster
Speaker 10: and server.
Speaker 3: First of all, how do you even get to do that? Like,
Speaker 3: what's the training involved to do that?
Speaker 10: Lots of sniffing, lots of slurping, lots of memorizing things.
Speaker 10: I can literally smell different sulfur compounds and they put
Speaker 10: them in front of me in coffee and chocolate and
Speaker 10: beer wine. They'll spike something and I'll be like, cis
Speaker 10: three hex and all that really fresh.
Speaker 3: You walk into a room like our studio and you're like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, like I'm smelling.
Speaker 10: You know, I can smell everything, but you guys smell great,
Speaker 10: so you don't have to worry too much.
Speaker 4: But do you I mean, is this something that anyone
Speaker 4: can do? Or do you have more sensitivity than other people.
Speaker 10: So everyone can train it. There's actually really cool studies
Speaker 10: that you can grow your old factory bulel, which is
Speaker 10: how we understand smells within two weeks of training, just sniffing,
Speaker 10: really concentrating, like we're going to focus on these wines.
Speaker 10: What are you smelling? Trying to remember it and you'll
Speaker 10: change the way that you taste in two or three weeks.
Speaker 8: Very cool.
Speaker 9: Why should we do that?
Speaker 3: What do you get out of learning how to kind
Speaker 3: of like think about smell when you're eating or drinking
Speaker 3: and so and so forth.
Speaker 9: Why is that so important?
Speaker 10: So think of watching a black and white movie, like
Speaker 10: that's what you're eating like right now, and then think
Speaker 10: of it in color. Think of all the depth the
Speaker 10: way that you can relate all of your memories as
Speaker 10: you're enjoying everything that you taste. It basically makes every
Speaker 10: sensory experience more deep and more memorable, which is what
Speaker 10: we want to live life for.
Speaker 8: Is it hard work for you?
Speaker 12: Though?
Speaker 4: In the sense of, like when you go out to
Speaker 4: a dinner with a friend, you're not necessarily enjoying it
Speaker 4: as much as somebody typically would because you kind of
Speaker 4: feel like you're working.
Speaker 10: So I've been doing it for so long that I
Speaker 10: believe there's a place for every taste. So even if
Speaker 10: something is a little, you know, not my favorite, I
Speaker 10: totally understand why it's there and I can appreciate what's
Speaker 10: going on. I think everything that we experience is just
Speaker 10: a memory we're making, and there's a place for everything.
Speaker 8: Like somebody's like, this tastes so good. You're like, actually,
Speaker 8: here's why.
Speaker 10: It's so subjective though, even our genes, our genes, certain genes.
Speaker 9: But come on, Mandy, there's times like no, no, it
Speaker 9: could be less.
Speaker 8: So that's legit.
Speaker 10: There's some times when we get to this red wine,
Speaker 10: if you don't have the right gene, you might literally
Speaker 10: just not taste the floral notes. I love wine, and.
Speaker 3: So tell me about like, all right, let's start with
Speaker 3: this first wine and kind of what we should do
Speaker 3: in terms of understanding the smell and why it's so important.
Speaker 9: And what we do, what you do smell when you
Speaker 9: So this is.
Speaker 10: The garzan Albarina from Uruguay, which is a pretty cool
Speaker 10: wine region. And what we're going to do is, first
Speaker 10: you just want to smell it a little bit further away, Okay,
Speaker 10: just see what you notice. First. This is going to
Speaker 10: be your top notes, the most powerful notes in the wine.
Speaker 10: And then we'll get closer and get a little swirl
Speaker 10: and smell again. Are you guys getting some fresh fruits
Speaker 10: on this? This is actually the new vintage that twenty
Speaker 10: twenty four gars on. I feel like it's so melon forward.
Speaker 10: It used to be a little bit more pair and all.
Speaker 9: You're getting melon.
Speaker 8: Oh I got melon?
Speaker 10: Yeah, you get that candle up instead of the pear.
Speaker 10: I don't know, nice all right, so we can get
Speaker 10: a little taste.
Speaker 9: Okay.
Speaker 10: I love this wine because it's not too intense. It
Speaker 10: can pair with pretty much any food. So I feel
Speaker 10: like you can show up at a party and no
Speaker 10: matter what your host is serving, you're not gonna overpower
Speaker 10: their dinner. It pairs with everything. And it's you know,
Speaker 10: under twenty dollars, So you could bring two bottles, one
Speaker 10: to serve, one for them to keep later and still
Speaker 10: be a really good guys.
Speaker 3: Are you finding as you do this that because we
Speaker 3: talk a lot about this that there are, yeah, some
Speaker 3: really expensive wines that are incredible, but more and more,
Speaker 3: there's some great offerings that don't cost that much money
Speaker 3: but have the smell like like all of that is there.
Speaker 10: Right, We're getting all this lush fruit on this right,
Speaker 10: which is what people look for in like a savion blanc.
Speaker 10: The savvy b girlies out there. But for the price
Speaker 10: of a good Savion blanc, you're you're gonna be paying
Speaker 10: way more than this, you know, under twenty dollars price limit,
Speaker 10: and this has got all the complexity of the right
Speaker 10: intensity that you want to be paying for that white.
Speaker 10: So you're getting the flavor without the price tag, just
Speaker 10: because it's from a little bit of a different region.
Speaker 10: It's from your wine in South Americas.
Speaker 3: Are you ever working with a customer and you're like,
Speaker 3: you do this for a winery or so and so forth,
Speaker 3: and you're like, this is terrible.
Speaker 10: Never say it's terrible. I will say there's seven different
Speaker 10: ways to smell something, So you know, sometimes we have
Speaker 10: to get into six and seven before we're really enjoying
Speaker 10: it and praising the wine. Okay, this one, I feel
Speaker 10: like right on the front, it's lovely. It's so lush.
Speaker 9: I'm not a white wine drinker, but this is lovely.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and great for a party, you know, if you're
Speaker 10: a red wine drinker.
Speaker 9: Though I am a red wine So tell me what
Speaker 9: you've got here.
Speaker 10: So this is the rio Haa from Faustino and they
Speaker 10: are kind of the rio hog producers there. This is
Speaker 10: the twenty fourteen. It just hits shelves.
Speaker 9: So we're just talking about it, but are we smelling?
Speaker 10: Do you get that big plumb note?
Speaker 13: Yeah?
Speaker 10: The last vintage did not have all these like black
Speaker 10: dark fruits like that hurrd. And the nice thing is
Speaker 10: if you want to pick this up and taste all
Speaker 10: those dark notes, they come with these little like wine
Speaker 10: markers right now, so you can pop it on your glass.
Speaker 10: It's on the top of the bottle. It's like a
Speaker 10: little gift, so you know you're not gonna sip my
Speaker 10: brown Fastino marker. So you know, as you're going through
Speaker 10: the night enjoying your glass, you don't one thing you
Speaker 10: can worry about with tasting. You know, if someone else's
Speaker 10: bad breath was in your glass, you're not gonna have
Speaker 10: to worry about that.
Speaker 8: One.
Speaker 3: I have to say with my family large family, like
Speaker 3: we all have our little like charms that we put
Speaker 3: out our glasses to make sure like we don't mess up,
Speaker 3: Like that's my wine.
Speaker 8: We have that too, right Yeah.
Speaker 4: If we're somewhere where we don't have that, we use
Speaker 4: different colored rubber bands to you.
Speaker 10: Really okay perfect, And it's such a small little gift.
Speaker 10: Like I think when you give people wine glasses, you
Speaker 10: don't know what's in their cabinet, and you can just
Speaker 10: be like forcing them to store something else, like a
Speaker 10: little extra wine charm isn't gonna take up your door space.
Speaker 9: So tell us again, like what we're getting here.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so we should be getting some like really dark
Speaker 10: fruits on the nose and then yeah, you guys just
Speaker 10: took your sip.
Speaker 9: Sorry, gents a goin with this.
Speaker 10: You get like a little a little spice at the end, right,
Speaker 10: like it kind of ends up almost a bit of
Speaker 10: black pepper. And what we'll sit on your tongue after
Speaker 10: is kind of that powerful spice note and that really
Speaker 10: stewed plum.
Speaker 9: What is this good with?
Speaker 10: So this, you'll need a little bit more of an
Speaker 10: intense food, so kind of like some red meat eat
Speaker 10: things like that. A really rich cheese would be so
Speaker 10: nice with that, because you get that nice tannin at
Speaker 10: the end, So something like exactly something like a gouda
Speaker 10: and then a sip of this after it's gonna kind
Speaker 10: of balance it out perfectly. You're not gonna have too
Speaker 10: much richness on your palate.
Speaker 8: So it's a thirty seven dollars bottle of.
Speaker 10: Wine, yeah, under forty bucks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's great. Yeah, and I don't know if we
Speaker 4: said that the garzan was seventeen dollars.
Speaker 10: Yeah, under twenty dollars.
Speaker 4: We got some white wine, we got some red wine.
Speaker 4: We got a little bit of bubbly, Carol.
Speaker 9: We have a little bit of bubbly. And listen, let's
Speaker 9: go there and tell us what we're so.
Speaker 10: First I want to say, just look what the shape of
Speaker 10: your glass too? You say how it's a little different. Yeah,
Speaker 10: with bubbly, we're gonna have rims that tip in a
Speaker 10: little bit because the bubbles are actually forcing aroma out
Speaker 10: of the glass or out of the solution, and it's
Speaker 10: gonna all collect right there. So this is our special
Speaker 10: champagne glass. Don't let anyone serve you in a flute, okay,
Speaker 10: and really why because it doesn't collect that glass, right
Speaker 10: So all of your aroma's just shooting out and there's
Speaker 10: no way to get your in there.
Speaker 9: So I was just going through glassware.
Speaker 10: At home, and yeah, so get rid of the flutes
Speaker 10: unless you're doing a big toast where no one wants
Speaker 10: to taste the champagne, like youve one hundred people, that's
Speaker 10: what a flut is good for. But if you're trying
Speaker 10: to taste this pole rogair.
Speaker 9: Well, this is what you want.
Speaker 3: You want to get your notes okay, so all right,
Speaker 3: I know, all right, we're gonna continue that it tells
Speaker 3: what we're smelling.
Speaker 10: So this is pol rogair, And unlike a lot of
Speaker 10: champagnes that have those really bright apple notes, this is
Speaker 10: like a little buttered brioche. It's a little bit sweeter,
Speaker 10: and if you taste it, it has a lot more
Speaker 10: body than a lot of champagnes. It actually is three
Speaker 10: equal parts of three different grapes.
Speaker 8: Oh my gosh, that's good.
Speaker 10: So you get that structure that kind of weighs on
Speaker 10: your palette a little bit, and I think sometimes when
Speaker 10: we're sipping champagne at New Year's it kind of zips
Speaker 10: right off your pallette. It's apply and it's gone. I
Speaker 10: love that this kind of hangs around and stays on
Speaker 10: your palette for a little bit.
Speaker 9: That's nice.
Speaker 10: And as a gifting champagne, it comes in a beautiful
Speaker 10: gift box and it's under fifty five dollars, so a
Speaker 10: lot of those gifting champagnes will be over one hundred.
Speaker 10: This one, I think, has the flavor, has the complexity,
Speaker 10: and hits you at a really nice price point.
Speaker 3: The first bottle of this or this brand sold in
Speaker 3: eighteen forty nine.
Speaker 10: Yeah, one hundred and seventy five years ago. Sticks there, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: You do coffee, you do wine, you do beer, chocolate,
Speaker 4: chocolate tea.
Speaker 8: What's your favorite?
Speaker 10: Oh my favorite?
Speaker 13: Oh good question.
Speaker 10: I mean I do love bubbles, but probably my favorite
Speaker 10: is getting into like the dark spirit space, love at love,
Speaker 10: a little whiskey, tasting a little dark rum.
Speaker 4: He explain how your business works, like who brings you
Speaker 4: in and who you do consulting for.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I work across restaurants, bars, I do things like
Speaker 10: private jets. We were just had a private jest, So
Speaker 10: I'm working with those companies, And basically what I'm doing
Speaker 10: is making sure every palette that walks into the door
Speaker 10: is going to have something pleasing to them. So whether
Speaker 10: you like sweet sour, really intense, less intense, We're going
Speaker 10: to make sure the drink's menu or the dessert menu
Speaker 10: offer something for everyone. And what we don't notice is
Speaker 10: the way that we all taste is a little bit different, right,
Speaker 10: So just genetically, there's certain flavors you can't taste. There's
Speaker 10: people who think everything is super bitter. So I kind
Speaker 10: of know the lay of the land, what percentage of
Speaker 10: people are going to think things are really bitter, and
Speaker 10: I make sure the restaurants know what I know as well.
Speaker 4: I was just having this conversation this week with my
Speaker 4: wife and her parents about cilantro because it's like this
Speaker 4: very polarizing thing to put on tacos, for example. Some
Speaker 4: people think it tastes like soap. There's a whole portion
Speaker 4: of the population. There's all portion of population. Things taste fine.
Speaker 4: Why does stuff happen like that?
Speaker 10: So this is totally genetics, and the more scientists dig
Speaker 10: into our genes, same thing. A third of people can't
Speaker 10: taste violets at all. They don't know what they can't smell.
Speaker 10: It smells like nothing to them. Wow, you can live
Speaker 10: happily your whole life without smelling violets. But when we
Speaker 10: know that, you're not gonna put a violet cocktail on
Speaker 10: the menu, right, Same thing with these jeans in cilantro.
Speaker 10: There's also bitterness. Like I said, there's five types of bitterness,
Speaker 10: and there's twenty five percent of the population can't taste
Speaker 10: three of those types. So that is just not going
Speaker 10: to be bitter.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 3: In the break, we were talking a little bit about
Speaker 3: and we're talking so much about smell and how it
Speaker 3: impacts us, but the color of a store, restaurant or something.
Speaker 3: And even in your book you talk about, you know,
Speaker 3: throwing your next dinner party where the.
Speaker 9: Thermostat should be.
Speaker 3: And I just like, what are the things that we
Speaker 3: need to think about, like when we're serving food or
Speaker 3: wine or just kind of that setting, especially something like
Speaker 3: a dining room or something where we're.
Speaker 9: Going to be eating and drinking a lot.
Speaker 10: Yeah, going back to the Fastino Rioja is actually a
Speaker 10: perfect example. See how it's like so opaque and you
Speaker 10: kind of can't see through it. Yeah, our brain just
Speaker 10: sees this rich color, and we immediately already think ooh expensive,
Speaker 10: ooh fancy. There's a lot of wines that are great
Speaker 10: that have a lighter color, but our brain just sees
Speaker 10: this rich red and things sweet. I want to taste
Speaker 10: that red is one of those colors that we reliably
Speaker 10: can trace to being that we crave it and that
Speaker 10: it's a little bit sweeter. So knowing all different things,
Speaker 10: you know about how you want to serve a wine,
Speaker 10: how you want to serve a cocktail. Certain cocktails if
Speaker 10: they're not so attractive, if they have that kind of
Speaker 10: pale color. We'll put it in an opaque glass so
Speaker 10: people can't see what it looks like and they're only
Speaker 10: getting the flavor. You don't want to let your eyes
Speaker 10: play tricks on you that like kind of play.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I play the science around smell. You mentioned that
Speaker 4: scientists doctors are starting to associate loss.
Speaker 8: Of smell with certain ailments.
Speaker 10: What's the research there, Yeah, so the size of your
Speaker 10: old factory bowl was actually a really great indicator of
Speaker 10: overall brain health. And scientists at the Monell Center have
Speaker 10: been researching smell loss and they think it's the earliest
Speaker 10: sign of dementia and Parkinson's. But there's no good consistent
Speaker 10: test for smelling. You know, you don't go into your
Speaker 10: physical and smell of lemon every single time, so a
Speaker 10: lot of people don't self report, oh, things don't smell
Speaker 10: as strong to me. And really, what scientists are starting
Speaker 10: to push for is a physical at your physical when
Speaker 10: you're little, you start doing a smell test and they
Speaker 10: can trace your smell your whole life. So when that
Speaker 10: starts to drop off, you can start kind of combating
Speaker 10: or testing for any kind of brain deterioration. Also, people
Speaker 10: with large olfactory bulbs weren't as affected by COVID and
Speaker 10: they didn't tend to get long COVID. Those studies are
Speaker 10: still coming out, but really, just focusing on taste and
Speaker 10: keeping that little part of your brain healthy seems to
Speaker 10: affect your brain as a whole.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I feel like the more we learn kind of
Speaker 3: how it all works here is certainly our body. Mandy,
Speaker 3: what a treat. Thank you so much for Tim and I.
Speaker 3: We're getting ready to head out for the holidays. We
Speaker 3: won't be around next week, although there'll be a lot
Speaker 3: going on at Bloomberg here. But what a great way
Speaker 3: to wrap up our week Friday, So thank you so much.
Speaker 3: The little toast, A little toast of the holidays.
Speaker 9: A little I'm trying to think, which should I like,
Speaker 9: pull out hands.
Speaker 7: And yeah.
Speaker 8: You can have one.
Speaker 10: Yeah, exactly. You can toast while you're drinking.
Speaker 9: This is something.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I'm gonna do a little bit of both.
Speaker 9: But first we got to wrap up our show.
Speaker 3: Mandy Naeglich, as we said, check out our book. She
Speaker 3: is a consultant works in the beverage and travel space.
Speaker 3: Her book has How to Taste, a guide to discovering
Speaker 3: flavor and savoring Life.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live each
Speaker 2: weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car Play
Speaker 2: and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You
Speaker 2: can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship
Speaker 2: New York station Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 9: Meta out with News this past week.
Speaker 3: But what we noticed was Zuck's fancy and pricey.
Speaker 13: Watched him more.
Speaker 4: On that and in and what feels like a few
Speaker 4: pursuit stories that are like tailor made totally for you
Speaker 4: for me, the best coffee machines for the perfect pour
Speaker 4: over yep.
Speaker 3: And it's five o'clock somewhere and in dry January, Well,
Speaker 3: you could have some coffee. But it also means it's
Speaker 3: time for a mockdal You know.
Speaker 8: What that means.
Speaker 4: It's time for Bloomberg Pursuits. Here with more the editor
Speaker 4: of Bloomberg Pursuits, Chris Rouser. Chris, I want to start
Speaker 4: with the watch scene around the world. Of course, as
Speaker 4: Carol mentioned Meta in the News for a host of
Speaker 4: reasons over the past week, but you and the team
Speaker 4: over at Pursuits around the World couldn't keep your eyes
Speaker 4: off that time piece that Mark Zuckerberg had.
Speaker 5: Well, well, well, some international news happens and you need
Speaker 5: to call me to come talk about it.
Speaker 8: That's how we roll.
Speaker 3: Here and everything going on around the world. When we
Speaker 3: got to go to you, what's up with that?
Speaker 5: So yeah, so Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement about the
Speaker 5: end of fact checking across Meta and Andy Hoffman are
Speaker 5: or in Geneva. You know he was in the video.
Speaker 5: He's just sitting in a small room. You can't see
Speaker 5: where he is. He has a little necklace on, you know,
Speaker 5: nondescript clothes and a big watch. And Andy Hoffman and
Speaker 5: Geneva emailed me and the news editors and said, I
Speaker 5: know that watch. That's a very expensive.
Speaker 3: Watch, like right away, right, yes.
Speaker 5: Early in the morning. And I was like, let's do it,
Speaker 5: Let's do the story.
Speaker 3: Can I just tell you we talk about expensive watches
Speaker 3: all the time, but this is something special.
Speaker 5: Yes, So this is a Grouble four Sea hand made
Speaker 5: one watch. I wrote about this watch in twenty nineteen
Speaker 5: when it first came out, and we put it in
Speaker 5: Business Week because it was so unusual. Ninety five percent
Speaker 5: of it has made my hand, including tiny, tiny, tiny
Speaker 5: wires that are the springs that make watches work. I don't.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's incomprehensibly to me how they do it.
Speaker 5: My hand, And so we shot it for Business Week
Speaker 5: and there was only one because they only make like
Speaker 5: two a year and it was very hard to get it.
Speaker 5: But this is like a total grail watch for people,
Speaker 5: and it has been since they started making it. There's
Speaker 5: only handful in the world and they cost almost nine
Speaker 5: hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: Okay, a pretty pen two or three. If you're worth
Speaker 4: more than two hundred billion dollars, like Mark Zuckerberg, you
Speaker 4: can totally do this.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 4: One thing that we've noticed about Mark Zuckerberg over the
Speaker 4: last couple of years is his change in style. He's
Speaker 4: sort of embraced a different look than that.
Speaker 3: Can we say he's getting fancy.
Speaker 5: The vibe is not fancy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know if that gold chain is fancy,
Speaker 4: but but he's kind of trying.
Speaker 8: To do a watch guy.
Speaker 4: Yes, he has so it's it's not just this that's
Speaker 4: part of his collection.
Speaker 8: He is. He has this growing collection.
Speaker 5: Yes, he has protect Phi Leaps, he has f P Jorns,
Speaker 5: which is another like sort of cult watch collector. Brand,
Speaker 5: although they make a lot more of those, but these
Speaker 5: Grooble four seas are really only available to a very
Speaker 5: small number of people. They make about the company as
Speaker 5: a whole only makes about two hundred and fifty watches
Speaker 5: a year. Robert Downey Junior one has one. Sam Altman
Speaker 5: from open Ai has won a different one, and these.
Speaker 5: We did a story about this company earlier in the
Speaker 5: year and the headline was these watches used to be
Speaker 5: the of the ultra rich, not anymore. And it's because
Speaker 5: these tech people are wearing them and you see them
Speaker 5: around and they're so big, like you can't miss them.
Speaker 3: Does it assume that Mark Zuckerberg has a deeper appreciation
Speaker 3: for really finely made watches. I mean, there are lots
Speaker 3: of watches out there that you can spend money on,
Speaker 3: but this is something else. Or is it just that
Speaker 3: he can, you know, help me understand The response on it.
Speaker 5: I don't know Mark personally, but.
Speaker 8: Come on, next three of us.
Speaker 5: The response on the internet.
Speaker 3: Has read it and say.
Speaker 5: From watch people is that like, oh, okay, he really
Speaker 5: gets it, like he understands what, you know, what like
Speaker 5: a really cool, like a very interesting important watches rather
Speaker 5: than just some other watches that are just sort of
Speaker 5: expensive for being expensive, the watch nerds applaud this, this, this,
Speaker 5: this ownership.
Speaker 3: Well done, well done, it's so funny. First of all,
Speaker 3: can I just tell you love my co host. I
Speaker 3: never think he drinks coffee.
Speaker 13: I do.
Speaker 8: Well, It's because I only have one cup a day.
Speaker 3: At home, and I'm finding out that it is not
Speaker 3: just your ordinary cup of coffee. You are kind of
Speaker 3: a coffee guru. You care about like your devices in it,
Speaker 3: and like not only that.
Speaker 4: I mean I spent about an hour cleaning the espresso
Speaker 4: machine last night.
Speaker 8: I'm not joking at all.
Speaker 5: Wow, exactly.
Speaker 4: The machine that I have doesn't look like any of
Speaker 4: the machines inside the Pursuit section. Mine's very old school.
Speaker 4: There's like this tech enabled approach to coffee that has
Speaker 4: taken off over the last couple of years, in part
Speaker 4: thanks to some folks who've quit Apple and been like,
Speaker 4: I can make a better mouse.
Speaker 5: Trap, Yes, make a better coffee filter. So we did
Speaker 5: a story for this coming New Year about pour over
Speaker 5: coffee machines. So you have an espresso machine, right, So,
Speaker 5: but pourover is for a lot of people. They like
Speaker 5: waking up in the morning. They like the ritual of
Speaker 5: making a single cup of coffee from a single filter,
Speaker 5: pouring it over slowly, and they also believe that, like
Speaker 5: for a normal drip coffee, this is the only way
Speaker 5: to get all of the apricots and essences of toast
Speaker 5: and whatever.
Speaker 4: People say on the I remember what it was like
Speaker 4: before I had kids too, Okay, because that's how people who.
Speaker 8: Don't have little kids enjoy.
Speaker 5: Wait, it wasn't quiet where they are in the morning.
Speaker 3: Yeah, am I just a peasant with my French press?
Speaker 4: Yeah right, I am, you're kind of I mean, French
Speaker 4: press makes good coffee, and it's good. That's good for
Speaker 4: making multiple cups of coffee, So like when people come over,
Speaker 4: we'll do that anyway, sorry, Chris.
Speaker 5: Ahead, Oh yeah, well no, I mean this is tim
Speaker 5: you know, I think you actually know more about this
Speaker 5: stuff than I do. But these pour over machines are
Speaker 5: basically doing what you would do if you did pour
Speaker 5: over on your own, which is like in a lot
Speaker 5: of cases, it's a single a single serving worth of
Speaker 5: beans that are ground like right there. You grind them
Speaker 5: and then you the hot water is poured over, and
Speaker 5: you know, you can choose the size of the beans,
Speaker 5: the size of the grind, the heat of the water.
Speaker 5: But basically it does kind of what you watch a
Speaker 5: lot of like Barista's constantly doing, which is taking the
Speaker 5: port of filter, filling it with beans, moving it over,
Speaker 5: putting it on the Esprecial machine. It's like that, but
Speaker 5: for a pour over coffee.
Speaker 3: I mean, you need coffee to make a cup of coffee.
Speaker 5: But just the movement of the filter from the ground
Speaker 5: beans to the where the hot water comes from is
Speaker 5: a big part of what these machines do for you.
Speaker 4: It does take a long time for an individual to
Speaker 4: do this themselves. And Carol, you and I were traveling
Speaker 4: a couple of years ago somewhere I don't remember where
Speaker 4: it was, and on the way to the venue, I
Speaker 4: stopped to get my first cup of coffee for the morning,
Speaker 4: my only cup, and I ordered a pour over and
Speaker 4: they told me we don't do pourovers in the morning
Speaker 4: because they take so long. Yeah, we're only doing drip
Speaker 4: coffee right now. And I was really disappointed because did
Speaker 4: you walk away.
Speaker 3: In a huff?
Speaker 9: I can't remember.
Speaker 8: No, no, no, I still ordered it.
Speaker 4: He's pretty friendly, but it just it goes to show
Speaker 4: that Yes, it's a very manual and laborious thing to do.
Speaker 4: And machine they've been for years. They've been trying to
Speaker 4: get machines to make us good of a cup of coffee.
Speaker 8: Have they pulled it off?
Speaker 12: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Me so.
Speaker 5: Matt Cronsberg, our writer, who is a total coffee grew
Speaker 5: as well, much more than I am, says that these
Speaker 5: are legit very good. Two of them. One of them
Speaker 5: makes just like a single serving, and then some of
Speaker 5: them make batches. One of them you can actually set
Speaker 5: a timer. Like when I used to drinkffee in the morning,
Speaker 5: I just wanted it to be ready when I was awake,
Speaker 5: and one of these will do it. So the x
Speaker 5: Bloom Studio, which is a new device from this company,
Speaker 5: x Bloom. It's four hundred and ninety nine dollars, and
Speaker 5: this is from the Apple Alum that you mentioned a lot.
Speaker 5: There's actually a lot of Apple Alums that have gotten
Speaker 5: into this space. And then if you want more of
Speaker 5: a batch, you can use the Fellow aid in which
Speaker 5: is three hundred and sixty five dollars, and that comes
Speaker 5: with like small and larger brewing baskets, so you can
Speaker 5: do and you can do the preset timing for that one.
Speaker 3: But they do a lot of stuff, these machines.
Speaker 5: Well, they also do blooming, which is something that I
Speaker 5: hate that I know about.
Speaker 8: But because you've got a coffee guy, No, I am a.
Speaker 5: Coffee person, but I stop drinking coffee in the morning.
Speaker 9: So what is blue?
Speaker 5: But blooming is when you pour hot water on beans,
Speaker 5: on ground beans to release the carbon dioxide before you
Speaker 5: actually brew, before you actually pour it through to filter
Speaker 5: through to brew your cup of coffee. And so if
Speaker 5: you some machines do it, these do, but if you
Speaker 5: do it yourself, you'll watch you pour hot water on
Speaker 5: the ground beans and it sort of bubbles, and that's
Speaker 5: the carbon dioxide releasing before you can get like an
Speaker 5: even more pure expression.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about dry January because we actually recently live
Speaker 3: on air, had someone bring in a couple of bottles
Speaker 3: of wine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Libby Wines came in a new company out of
Speaker 4: northern California. They have like a heritage and wine making and.
Speaker 3: Okay, this is really terrible because Tim and I have
Speaker 3: tried some non alcoholic stuff and it wasn't so good.
Speaker 5: No, it's mostly bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was good. We enjoyed this. Yeah, but it's happening, right.
Speaker 5: It has been happening for a while. People have not
Speaker 5: figured it out until I would say the last year
Speaker 5: or two in terms of like they've been figuring it
Speaker 5: out for a while, but in terms of what you're
Speaker 5: going to get at a restaurant or a store, I've
Speaker 5: only tasted stuff that's decent in the like last year
Speaker 5: or two. But now their wine, particularly has gotten pretty good.
Speaker 5: And we kat Odell, who's like a very very cool
Speaker 5: food and drinks writer, wrote this story for us about
Speaker 5: how these companies are figuring it out. And in the
Speaker 5: year that ended in June twenty twenty four, zero proof
Speaker 5: drink sales rose twenty four percent to one hundred and
Speaker 5: ninety nine million in the US. So you know, this
Speaker 5: is a big growing thing, and people not drinking is
Speaker 5: affecting the like LVMH, like Mohett Hennessy like that. A
Speaker 5: lot of the big wine and spirits and champagne companies
Speaker 5: are softening because.
Speaker 3: Of this, and are they starting to then like say,
Speaker 3: we need to embrace this, right, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 4: Totally, you guys highlight a handful of cool stuff. I
Speaker 4: got to tell you, I haven't tried one thing that's
Speaker 4: on this list.
Speaker 5: A lot of this is new.
Speaker 8: Okay, yeah, so that makes sense. But what it?
Speaker 12: What it?
Speaker 4: What I've noticed is that you're actually getting uh, non
Speaker 4: alcohol versions of full cocktails. Like when I go in
Speaker 4: order a mocktail at a restaurant, it's like, it doesn't it.
Speaker 4: It's not trying to be a nonloo non alcoholic version
Speaker 4: of a real drink. It's something completely different, basically on
Speaker 4: a different part of the menu. That's true, Yes you can.
Speaker 8: I do like those those are good ones that are
Speaker 8: made in Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: It's pure sugar.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's something.
Speaker 3: We looked at the one like that's the thing that
Speaker 3: we know, and.
Speaker 5: It was it.
Speaker 8: The Libby wines had no added sugar.
Speaker 3: You know what I thought was really interesting. I have
Speaker 3: no idea of all the stuff that's going on. A
Speaker 3: couple of things that caught my attention. Elderflower, which I
Speaker 3: have done, kind of the alcoholic version. Yeah, it feels
Speaker 3: like it's having a moment. There's that, and then there's
Speaker 3: like Alice Cooper getting involved.
Speaker 5: Who would have thought, Yeah, this is a great example
Speaker 5: of the kind of pre mixed thing that you were
Speaker 5: talking about. Tim, and I have to read this from
Speaker 5: the paper because there's so many words in this name.
Speaker 5: But it's the whistle Pig, whiskey, sex, drug, rock and roll, dry,
Speaker 5: old fashioned, And it's a collaboration between whistle whistle Pig,
Speaker 5: which is a whiskey maker, and Alice Cooper. And apparently
Speaker 5: it's great. It's a sort of a blend of alcohol
Speaker 5: free rye whiskey, Cordy steps, mushrooms, shassandra berry.
Speaker 3: Interesting stuff. But it's Alice Cooper, so you'd expect like
Speaker 3: baby some interesting.
Speaker 4: So the fact that whistle Pig is putting its name
Speaker 4: behind this, I think is a big deal because whistle
Speaker 4: Pig makes a whiskey that a lot.
Speaker 8: Of people really like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, correct, So they're not going to want their name
Speaker 4: associated with something that is, yeah, probably not up to
Speaker 4: par with what they're known for.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a risk to it. Like you sure they
Speaker 5: want to get into this market. Sure they want to
Speaker 5: put their name on something that so that an na
Speaker 5: drinker can have it on their bar, but like they
Speaker 5: can't have it be bad. So you know, they took time.
Speaker 5: The brands like that have taken time and care with
Speaker 5: figuring this out. The other thing I really like from
Speaker 5: this list is French French Bloom, which is the champagne.
Speaker 5: Champagne was a little easy, faster to get to tasting
Speaker 5: decent in the non alcoholic space. I think because you
Speaker 5: got the bubbles. It's sort of Chris, But this French bloom,
Speaker 5: if you have it, it's really great. It tastes like champagne.
Speaker 5: It is champagne, and it does it has you feel
Speaker 5: just as celebratory when.
Speaker 10: You're having it.
Speaker 3: It's not cheap either, one hundred and nineteen dollars right,
Speaker 3: yeah for a bottle hundred and fifty militers. Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: just saying that's enough.
Speaker 5: It seems good.
Speaker 3: Got to say it's a great list, So Tim, it's
Speaker 3: a list you need to work on it. We have
Speaker 3: to get more of those guys in studio and gals
Speaker 3: and then also have christraps.
Speaker 8: Okay, I'll buy the shoots Patagonia.
Speaker 5: Yea collab.
Speaker 8: You can get that, you know, one hundred dollars.
Speaker 9: Chris and I are doing that Champagne.
Speaker 5: I'll bring the nine hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Watch all right, all right, Chris, thank you.
Speaker 8: That's Chris Hrauser, editor of Bloomberg Pursuits.
Speaker 3: And that wraps up our weekend edition of Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Speaker 3: Fromloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: I'm Tim Steneberg and I'm Carol Mass.
Speaker 3: Have a good and safe weekend. Bottom up, so everybody.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
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