Speaker 1: I'm Caroline hired of Bloomberg's World Hoarders in New York
Speaker 1: and I made Ludlow in San Francisco. This is Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Technology and Carolina a great month and then has that
Speaker 1: one d best since July ahead of a key FED meeting.
Speaker 1: But right now all about earnings, and it's all about
Speaker 1: the share reaction after earnings. And first and foremost, we
Speaker 1: therefore got to dive into snap falling hard after it
Speaker 1: forecasts is first ever quarterly revenue decline. Then my conversation
Speaker 1: with the Nicholas CEO, Michael lost Seller is the company
Speaker 1: reboots its electric truck offering and the Unicorn trying to
Speaker 1: bring back the Dodo bird. We talked to Colossal Biosciences,
Speaker 1: but first we want to get into the devil of
Speaker 1: the detail insider Intelligence. Principal analyst Jasmine and Burger's with
Speaker 1: us for more on STAPs earnings. And you lead the
Speaker 1: coverage of influencer marketing of social commerce. You focus on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: I need not go on you know where the eyeballs are.
Speaker 1: What notices for me every time Snapchat does really well
Speaker 1: in terms of the amount of users. It has the
Speaker 1: control has the thirteen year olds to the thirty year olds,
Speaker 1: the amount of impressions they get. Why can't they convert
Speaker 1: it into money? Well, you're absolutely right. I mean, snapchats
Speaker 1: audience and its user growth is absolutely not its problem.
Speaker 1: It has a strong hold over gen Z, over teams
Speaker 1: who really love the platform. It's very different from any
Speaker 1: other social platform. It's more focused on private sharing. It
Speaker 1: has also, you know, invested heavily into augmented reality, which
Speaker 1: its users love. But the reality is, at this point
Speaker 1: most of its user growth is actually coming from the
Speaker 1: rest of the world, and the rest of the world
Speaker 1: monetizes at a much lower rate than the US, and
Speaker 1: that has hampered it's reven your growth as well, Jasmine
Speaker 1: the range of two to ten percent drop in top
Speaker 1: line for the current period. Does that tell you Snap
Speaker 1: has no visibility on the ad market or Snap has
Speaker 1: no visibility on how their tweaks around direct response is going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it's you know, a pretty difficult
Speaker 1: sign for how the ad market is doing right now.
Speaker 1: But I think the reality is is we have to
Speaker 1: be ready for a period of much more modest growth
Speaker 1: for social media in general. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: challenges right now to social ad businesses, whether that is
Speaker 1: the privacy policy changes that have really impacted particularly performance advertisers,
Speaker 1: as well as the volatile economic conditions. And you know,
Speaker 1: these challenges clearly continued to persist throughout two and I'm
Speaker 1: expecting there to be more challenges and much more competition
Speaker 1: ahead as well. One headline on the terminal is about
Speaker 1: the forecast for the drop in revenue. The other headline
Speaker 1: is Snapchat Plus subscription draws more than two million users.
Speaker 1: The stock down thirteen and a half percent in after hours.
Speaker 1: Does anyone care about Snapchat Plus? Well, you know, Snapchat
Speaker 1: users care about Snapchat Plus. I think it's you know,
Speaker 1: a feature that has really been able to draw in
Speaker 1: more engagement for a Snapchat. Whether it's going to be
Speaker 1: a revenue boon is still an open question. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, more it will be a way for them
Speaker 1: to keep their users engaged and keep them happy on
Speaker 1: Snapchat and and really just using the app more so
Speaker 1: users like it. Let's talk about how they can convert
Speaker 1: the advertisers to liking. Is it as you say that
Speaker 1: they need to just drive more conversion, more money from
Speaker 1: the international growth or how can they start proving that
Speaker 1: the direct response is really where the American purchaser needs
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, I think one thing for Snapchat, of course,
Speaker 1: it's a much smaller platform, so it has been more
Speaker 1: impacted by a lot of these challenges. One interesting thing
Speaker 1: to note with Snapchat is that it is incredibly highly
Speaker 1: associated with augmented reality, but it actually only makes a
Speaker 1: fraction of its ad revenues. So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: challenges that it has to you know, rise to this year,
Speaker 1: and one of them is really helping advertisers to understand
Speaker 1: the platform and how to use the platform and its
Speaker 1: features to be able to reach those consumers. And let's
Speaker 1: do the read across the ripple effect, the fact that
Speaker 1: metas trading lower pinterest and sympathy. Is that the right
Speaker 1: view to take that this is something industry wide or
Speaker 1: is this idiosyncratic because I'm going to give another key
Speaker 1: name that's also better an awful lot or not just
Speaker 1: a are but VR. Yeah, I mean I think this,
Speaker 1: These challenges really are affecting all of these social platforms,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't think it's wrong to be
Speaker 1: worried about the state of social media advertising right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, at Insider Intelligence, we're actually forecasting metas first
Speaker 1: ever ad revenue client decline for two So I think
Speaker 1: that tells you kind of the state of social advertising
Speaker 1: right now. Jazzmine, we've been covering a lot recently Twitter
Speaker 1: right and its aspirations to go from around two million
Speaker 1: installed user base to about while a billion. Maybe my
Speaker 1: question is when you look at Twitter, you look at Snap,
Speaker 1: is there growth there? How do they grow to be
Speaker 1: more meaningfully global, to have much bigger factors of audience
Speaker 1: that use their platforms well, Twitter of course is unique
Speaker 1: and that a lot of its issues right now are
Speaker 1: are self inflicted. And the Insider Intelligence we're actually expecting
Speaker 1: Twitter's user base to decline both in the US and worldwide.
Speaker 1: Four We're expecting a decline of about thirty two million
Speaker 1: monthly users worldwide. So it's going to be an uphill
Speaker 1: battle really for Twitter to be able to grow its
Speaker 1: user base. I do think that there is an opportunity
Speaker 1: to be able to increase engagement among users as long
Speaker 1: as Twitter is able to hit on features that really
Speaker 1: appeal to its audience, and that is something that they
Speaker 1: haven't been able to do as if yet. All Right, well,
Speaker 1: can continued to track snapshare reaction in after hours throughout
Speaker 1: the show, Insider Intelligence principal analysts Jasmine Enberg, thank you
Speaker 1: very much. The d o J is looking into Tesla's
Speaker 1: autopilot and self driving claim to the ev maker confirmed
Speaker 1: in a regulatory filing it's received requests for documents from
Speaker 1: the US Justice Department. It's looking at claims the company
Speaker 1: has made about features that it markets as autopilot and
Speaker 1: for self driving or FSD, and it's all part of
Speaker 1: growing scrutiny around Tesla's technology. Now Elon Musk company said, quote,
Speaker 1: we have experienced and we expect to continue to face
Speaker 1: claimed and regulatory scrutiny around what the company characterizes as
Speaker 1: claimed failures or alleged misrepresentations. Tesla said it's unaware of
Speaker 1: any government agency with an ongoing investigation that's reached the
Speaker 1: conclusion any wrongdoing has occurred. Now on the company's most
Speaker 1: recent earnings, called where it would be expectations, must said
Speaker 1: that every time Tesla sells a car, it quote has
Speaker 1: the ability to have full self driving enabled, which he
Speaker 1: sees as quote a tremendous upside potential. Now, Caroline, that's
Speaker 1: the d o J. It was just Friday, where Bloomberg
Speaker 1: reported the SEC is also looking specifically at comments Musk
Speaker 1: has made around this area of self driving as part
Speaker 1: of its broader investigation. This regulatory overhang, though, seems to
Speaker 1: not be as important to shareholders as ultimately the fundamentals
Speaker 1: of the business, the prices of the cars, because today
Speaker 1: we actually saw the shares rise, yes, mid risk appetite,
Speaker 1: but also despite this d J headline and since its earnings,
Speaker 1: real momentum for Tesla. So I'm gonna move on actually
Speaker 1: Caroline to another ev maker because earlier today here in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, I caught up with Michael lo Sheller, who
Speaker 1: is the latest CEO of Nicola, who was here in
Speaker 1: town for the Bloomberg any F conference, and after what
Speaker 1: was frankly a tough year last year for Nicola, I
Speaker 1: asked going to be a chance to reset. Here's what
Speaker 1: he told me. So key message from our side will
Speaker 1: be we have the trucks on the one side, zero
Speaker 1: mission trucks. We started last year with a launch of
Speaker 1: the battery electric truck, launched this year the fuel sil truck,
Speaker 1: and we want to make sure that also the energy
Speaker 1: infrastructure is there. So in a way we want to
Speaker 1: make sure we have an integrated solution, you can call it.
Speaker 1: We want to put the chicken in the egg together.
Speaker 1: A big focus of Bloomberg U energy finances research around
Speaker 1: batteries and nichol is interesting. Multiple sources of cell supply.
Speaker 1: But an acquisition of Romeo, how how has that gone?
Speaker 1: You know, how do you feel about your supply? Going
Speaker 1: into very important decision for us to acquire all neal
Speaker 1: power because obviously the battery is a very important element
Speaker 1: component of the truck, and I think the vertical integration
Speaker 1: is so important. Now we can control the battery, optimize it,
Speaker 1: improve it. We also will move from Cyprus to Coolist
Speaker 1: so that everything is together and our stay of the
Speaker 1: art facility. So I think it's a big benefit. And
Speaker 1: of course there's a lot to do. We can on
Speaker 1: the battery and improve it further. I want to get
Speaker 1: to the kind of hydrogen infrastructure, but battery electrics where
Speaker 1: you've started. Um, you know that the guidance was just
Speaker 1: short three hundred deliveries on the battery electric truck in
Speaker 1: Romeo is an interesting situation because before you bought them,
Speaker 1: they were offering these kind of supply of seals packs
Speaker 1: at a discount, then you acquired them and brought them in.
Speaker 1: How are the economics of that transaction worked out? Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it the sort of most prudent financial decision to
Speaker 1: just go out and buy your own sell supply rather
Speaker 1: than do deals with the parties. First of all, it
Speaker 1: was important for us to do the vertical integration. It's
Speaker 1: much better that we have it in our hands, and
Speaker 1: obviously we will improve the cross position going forward. Right
Speaker 1: instead of having negotiations with suppliers and have lots of things,
Speaker 1: so to own the battery is really important for us
Speaker 1: and makes a lot of sense that I feel very
Speaker 1: good about that. I've been covering Nickless since early and
Speaker 1: a part of the story that gets discussed less is
Speaker 1: you're not just planning to make a hydrogen fuel cell
Speaker 1: semi truck. You're planning to build out the infrastructure to
Speaker 1: fuel the trucks literally hydrogen supply. What is the plan
Speaker 1: presently for that? And that's a very important point. So
Speaker 1: last week we actually announced all our hydrogen energy related
Speaker 1: things and we umbrella everything under the name of Hyler.
Speaker 1: So I think that's very important to have a brand
Speaker 1: for our hydrogen energy activities and what we want to
Speaker 1: do at Nicola is to offer the truck, so the
Speaker 1: fuel sure truck, but every few side truck of course
Speaker 1: needs hydrogen. And the customers are expecting that we offer books,
Speaker 1: and I think bringing these things together is really important
Speaker 1: and at the end of the day, I'm sure the
Speaker 1: customer will value that a lot. Great interview there with
Speaker 1: the CEO of Nicola. Now let's turn to some earnings
Speaker 1: that we've just been getting again, Thick and Fast and
Speaker 1: electronic arts one of them. The video game publisher behind
Speaker 1: the franchises, Fever, just gave a forecast for next bookings
Speaker 1: in the fourth quarter that fell short of analyst estimates.
Speaker 1: This is the company's holiday releases that they failed to
Speaker 1: offset a broader decline in gaming revenue or down by
Speaker 1: seven percent after ours as COVID related game delays pushed
Speaker 1: several anticipated titles into three including as remake of the
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight survival horror game Dead Space coming up.
Speaker 1: Sony facing some challenges with its vr head site, one
Speaker 1: of them, of course, being all games are you gonna
Speaker 1: be playing on it? What it all means for the
Speaker 1: virtual reality sectors fate next slush teachers rejoice open a
Speaker 1: eyes got a tool to help classify content as AI
Speaker 1: written but passed off as human or on that next
Speaker 1: this is Blomberg. There might be a relief to some
Speaker 1: teaching staff out there because open ai is coming out
Speaker 1: with a new tool to tell when text is written
Speaker 1: in AI, the company behind chat chypt. Of course it's
Speaker 1: going to flag content written by its products as well
Speaker 1: as other AI tools, but open ai does say that
Speaker 1: the tool quote still has a number of limitations, should
Speaker 1: be used as a complement to other methods of determining
Speaker 1: the source of text. It will be available as a
Speaker 1: web ab and available to totally teachers. Let's bring in
Speaker 1: them bugs, Dina bas for more. I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of the handwringing around chat chypt was around teaching staff
Speaker 1: and the fact that students are going to busy basically
Speaker 1: getting chat gypt to write their studies. Absolutely, I don't
Speaker 1: know if we should be excited about the extent to
Speaker 1: which our students embrace innovation, but yes, some of the
Speaker 1: earliest users of chat chypt were students who figured out
Speaker 1: that they could use it to do their homework and
Speaker 1: do their essays. Also employees, people that work using it,
Speaker 1: and people pretending to be humans. There's real worry about
Speaker 1: using it for misinformation for astroturfing campaigns. So open ai
Speaker 1: as well as the people have been working on ways
Speaker 1: to flag when content is AI generated as opposed to
Speaker 1: human author but not so fast. As you mentioned, open
Speaker 1: ai flag that it's a bit limited. Right now, they're
Speaker 1: only getting about a success rate and identifying AI generated content,
Speaker 1: and on some level, perhaps even more worrying, they're getting
Speaker 1: a nearly ten percent false positive rate. So something is
Speaker 1: human authored and it will be flagged as generated by
Speaker 1: the AI. Now imagine you're a high school student whose
Speaker 1: teacher is using this accuses you of cheating when you've
Speaker 1: actually written the essay yourself. Also not great. So you know,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that the underlying technology that powers chat GPT
Speaker 1: is complicated, but as best you can how does this work?
Speaker 1: How is it supposed to work? So all of the
Speaker 1: things that underli chat GPT are large language models that
Speaker 1: have been trained on the vast or ay of data
Speaker 1: from the Internet. So what open ai did here was
Speaker 1: also attempt to train and model. They took samples that
Speaker 1: they believed to be human authored, they labeled them as
Speaker 1: human author that they matched You know, a prompt to
Speaker 1: the output, and they did the same thing with things
Speaker 1: that were AI authored and trying to use that to
Speaker 1: teach an artificial intelligence model to guess for itself, predict
Speaker 1: for itself which ones are human, which ones are not.
Speaker 1: Now you know some of the limitations here. It is
Speaker 1: not reliable on very short amounts of text. So open
Speaker 1: AI said below a thousand characters, it really can't do much. Um,
Speaker 1: if it's looking at a text where there's automatically a
Speaker 1: right answer, like they gave the example at the first
Speaker 1: thousand prime numbers, you can't tell the correct answer will
Speaker 1: be the same regardless of who is who's writing it.
Speaker 1: There's also, you know, people have been very smart about
Speaker 1: these things. There's ways to edit the AI generated content
Speaker 1: in order to evade this classification tool. And so you
Speaker 1: end up in a bit of a game of whack
Speaker 1: a mole where people figure out how to change the
Speaker 1: AI content to make it hard of a classifier to
Speaker 1: determine that it's written by about Bloomberg. Steena Bass, you
Speaker 1: have been across every single step of this story since
Speaker 1: the start. Unbelievable, great reporting. Thanks for joining. Now let's
Speaker 1: pivot a little bit Sony reduced projections for the initial
Speaker 1: launch of its PlayStation VR two headset drastically. That's according
Speaker 1: to sources. That's also as a result of week early
Speaker 1: pre orders. I want to bring in Bloomberg's Mark German
Speaker 1: all across the consumer electronics feed Mark, what have we
Speaker 1: learned about this kind of reset from Sony. Yes, so
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News reported uh this week that orders have been
Speaker 1: reduced for their new VR ps v R two headset. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a big deal slashing orders. It's right now
Speaker 1: the VR market does not have a lot of momentum
Speaker 1: Apples announcing it's headset in just a few months. But
Speaker 1: at the same time you have this report, you have
Speaker 1: Meta actually reducing the price, at least on a limited basis,
Speaker 1: of its Quest Pro headset by a few hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: From so, I think overall this is not so much
Speaker 1: a story about Sony but the virtual reality market in general.
Speaker 1: And this is why you see some of the other
Speaker 1: tech giants, including Apple, Samsung and Amazon really looking long
Speaker 1: term more at a R rather than VR. That's fascinating, Mark,
Speaker 1: because of course you bring our scooper to scoop on
Speaker 1: what Apple is thinking about at the moment. The question
Speaker 1: with Sony is whether it's the price point, whether the
Speaker 1: fact that it's basically only servicing its own PS five
Speaker 1: so it's a bit too much of a niche market.
Speaker 1: I'm interested is to what the read across four and
Speaker 1: Apple is for example, I mean, have they got enough content,
Speaker 1: enough content creation to make you want to splurge on
Speaker 1: these sorts of devices. Yes. So the Sony device, right,
Speaker 1: it's not too expensive if you compare the price point
Speaker 1: to Apples three thou dollars versus you know, sub five
Speaker 1: dollars for the VR headset. The problem is is that
Speaker 1: it requires, like you said, a PlayStation, right, there are
Speaker 1: still some people who want PlayStations who can't get their
Speaker 1: hands on PlayStations. So this is a device for device
Speaker 1: that you can't even get your hands on in some cases,
Speaker 1: and it only works with that product. The difference being
Speaker 1: that the Meta headset, the Apple headset, some of the
Speaker 1: headsets from other providers, those are all completely stand abone devices. Right,
Speaker 1: So Sony is limiting use cases, usability and the addressable
Speaker 1: market right from the get go, just by including that,
Speaker 1: you know, required compatibility and required use with the PlayStation, right,
Speaker 1: Apples fully standalone requiring phone. Mark. We've covered Apple that
Speaker 1: we've covered, so let's do Samsung as well. Why not
Speaker 1: big week for them? You're excited about what's to come. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not. Actually, I think Samsung's new devices this week
Speaker 1: are actually going to be pretty marginal. We're talking minor
Speaker 1: camera improvements on the two base models. We're talking about
Speaker 1: a jump from a hundred eight megapixels to two d
Speaker 1: megapixels on the back camera of their highest end phone.
Speaker 1: So you're not seeing major improvements, major design changes, AGR
Speaker 1: processor upgrades here. These are going to be very smaller
Speaker 1: year over your upgrades. For the Apple watchers out there,
Speaker 1: there's this term where you call it an s year, right,
Speaker 1: sometimes you get the iPhone fives or success right the tenants.
Speaker 1: This is like that for samtime. This's your small improvements.
Speaker 1: Mark German, fascinating. Thank you so much across the hardware conversation. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: let's get you to the music conversation. Because Spotify reported
Speaker 1: fourth court to subscribe a growth that beat estimates a
Speaker 1: lot of that of course to do a podcasting to
Speaker 1: the monthly active users have now reached almost five million.
Speaker 1: The gross margin also better than expected. Because all helping
Speaker 1: the shares jump the most in the year. Today now
Speaker 1: the ad supported revenue in the music streaming giant also
Speaker 1: climbed four and that's actually at a time when brands
Speaker 1: have been slowing their spending. So the executives were staying
Speaker 1: pretty optimistic on the longer term goals of this business
Speaker 1: and also of course focused on the near term efficiency
Speaker 1: after Spotify recently announced that it is planning to cut
Speaker 1: about six percent of its employee Welcome back to Remo Technology.
Speaker 1: I'm Caroline Hide in New York and ed well the
Speaker 1: stories continue earnings but also sadly layoffs. Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: lot of that driving movement and after hours, so let's
Speaker 1: get right to it. Some of the names we've been
Speaker 1: talking about in the show, particularly snap down in a
Speaker 1: big way and after hours now more than fourteen percent.
Speaker 1: Forecasts for revenue that's going to drop two a wide range,
Speaker 1: and investors kind of shaking off this idea. It subscription
Speaker 1: service has reached two million users quickly e A now
Speaker 1: down eleven percent, really accelerating those declines in after hours.
Speaker 1: It's forecast for bookings basically show that those new titles
Speaker 1: out in the holidays have not gained traction. If there's
Speaker 1: a bright spot, it's a m D in the chip
Speaker 1: sets are at one point seven percent, a strong forecast
Speaker 1: for the current period, bucking the trend, a lot of
Speaker 1: strength in server. I also want to pivots to fintech
Speaker 1: because there's actually a fair amount of newsflow and fintech,
Speaker 1: particularly around layoffs. As you discussed PayPal in firming that
Speaker 1: it's doing layoffs being cheered in after hours, up too,
Speaker 1: and Upstart a name that caught my eye. It is
Speaker 1: cutting around of staff Caroline, but that wasn't as far
Speaker 1: as it went. It also is scrapping development of a
Speaker 1: small business loans program, citing macro economic conditions, which for
Speaker 1: a fintech company that basically deals in AI powered lending,
Speaker 1: is a worrying sign. Yeah, good point on the macro there.
Speaker 1: Let's dig in a little bit more into the fintech
Speaker 1: space and really what some other key companies are seeing
Speaker 1: as to where to invest on a MARS is with
Speaker 1: us as American Express Glue president for Global Commercial Services,
Speaker 1: just introduced in fact Business Blueprint. It's a free digital
Speaker 1: tool that lets small businesses manage their cash flow. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about the business Blueprint on and what are
Speaker 1: you responding to. Clearly you're seeing demand coming from small
Speaker 1: businesses like absolutely, So we're really excited about the launch
Speaker 1: of Business Blueprint for a few reasons for American Express.
Speaker 1: The first is American Express of the leader in small
Speaker 1: business cards. You'll know that we have over three million
Speaker 1: small business card customers here in the US UH and
Speaker 1: we know that those customers want more. They want easier,
Speaker 1: more integrated ways to manage your cash flow, which is
Speaker 1: always a small business pain point, you know, in any
Speaker 1: economic climate. And what Blueprint lets us does, let's us
Speaker 1: do is engage with these customers in new ways so
Speaker 1: they can come onto the platform and log into access
Speaker 1: a free insights tool, they could apply for a flexible
Speaker 1: line of credit product, they can take an American Express
Speaker 1: business checking account and access a great a p y
Speaker 1: all in one, easy to manage place. And we kind
Speaker 1: of see it as one of the most important new
Speaker 1: benefits that you've rolled out to small businesses really since
Speaker 1: membership rewards. So we're very excited about the launch today.
Speaker 1: You see, it's a significant growth opportunity where why well,
Speaker 1: small business already a big part of American Express and
Speaker 1: and We're a big part of small businesses here in
Speaker 1: the US. In fact, I talked about those three million
Speaker 1: small businesses, but they represent about of all of all
Speaker 1: US small business cards spending. That every time a small
Speaker 1: business uses a card in the US on a billions
Speaker 1: of making a payment, it comes through American Express. So
Speaker 1: it's already a big part of the company. And it's
Speaker 1: our goal really to support these small businesses as they grow.
Speaker 1: You know, the post pandemic period, we saw this incredible
Speaker 1: small business formation in the US, over five million small
Speaker 1: businesses forms. We want to make sure that as many
Speaker 1: of them as possible become American Express customers. We help
Speaker 1: them navigate whatever is ahead. And of course in the
Speaker 1: here term, the macro picture a bit bleaker. Longer term,
Speaker 1: you know, who knows where the cycle goes. I was
Speaker 1: on the phone with Steve Square, your CEO, on Friday,
Speaker 1: and he was talking about some of the slowdown in
Speaker 1: payments that he's seeing from small businesses. What are you
Speaker 1: seeing at the moment and why is that? The company?
Speaker 1: Last Friday, as you know, that day you talked to Steve,
Speaker 1: reported revenue growth for the full year in twenty two
Speaker 1: and we went out and gave guidance for twenty three
Speaker 1: of revenue growth between fifteen and seventeen percent. So we're
Speaker 1: seeing very strong spending trends across our customer base. We
Speaker 1: did to talk about was a moderation and small business
Speaker 1: digital advertising spend. We have a very broad range of
Speaker 1: small businesses that spent on many things they need to
Speaker 1: run and grow their businesses. So interesting that maybe that
Speaker 1: more caution and I remember Steve saying whether or not
Speaker 1: it was being just a bit of confusion or whether
Speaker 1: it was more than macro economy on that. Just talk
Speaker 1: to us a little bit about the fact that this
Speaker 1: whole business blueprint comes from an acquisition you made of Cabbage,
Speaker 1: one that I know well sort of a o G
Speaker 1: in the European fintech space. You're retiring the name Cabbage.
Speaker 1: Is that something that we're going to see a little
Speaker 1: bit more of Ressie for example? Will these things become
Speaker 1: AMEX printed. Well, we try to be very led by
Speaker 1: what works for our customers, and smallness has told us
Speaker 1: very clearly given that big position that we have in cards,
Speaker 1: that they know American Express, they love American Express, and
Speaker 1: it was easier for them to understand the business blueprint
Speaker 1: from American Express as part of that overall relationship your purview,
Speaker 1: you're helping serve small, midsize but also big global companies here,
Speaker 1: and I'm interested in what you're seeing from a corporate
Speaker 1: vontage point. With Steve on the call again sort of
Speaker 1: and when chatting Tim talked about corporate travel just not
Speaker 1: yet coming back. What are you hearing from the people
Speaker 1: that you talked to about the desire corporate is willing
Speaker 1: to spend at the moment. So that's absolutely right. When
Speaker 1: the pandemic hit in early we saw corporate travel reduce,
Speaker 1: you know, materially I was down minus six percent I
Speaker 1: think at this low point way back in and as
Speaker 1: everyone got back on the road into begin to see
Speaker 1: a gradual recovery. UM. It's still not back to levels,
Speaker 1: but my clients tell me they are beginning to travel.
Speaker 1: You see a return to travel faster and some of
Speaker 1: those more customer facing, client facing industries like banking, aspetes
Speaker 1: of financial services. But it's been a slow ramp and
Speaker 1: we don't expect it to come back fully UM for
Speaker 1: for a while UM. But customers are getting out there,
Speaker 1: moving around and it's an exciting growth story. In the
Speaker 1: years ahead, and a lot of that's technologically driven, and
Speaker 1: I'm interested as the tech shows sort of the talent
Speaker 1: you have on board, the that you're rolling out these
Speaker 1: new offerings small businesses. Are you making the most of
Speaker 1: the fact that, like some people are letting go of
Speaker 1: great engineering talent. Is that something you want to be
Speaker 1: up on? How does it look like for you? In
Speaker 1: amics we mentioned the Cabbage acquisition, and as we looked
Speaker 1: at that opportunity, we were excited about the products that
Speaker 1: of course the tech platform, you know, being able to
Speaker 1: make these interoperable products work together, but also the people
Speaker 1: we had in Cabbage, a sort of digitally native small
Speaker 1: business focus set of product and engineer, you know, leaders
Speaker 1: in their industry. If you're really excited to bring them
Speaker 1: into team AMICX, and we're excited to keep building and
Speaker 1: we bought in the years ahead. All right, to have
Speaker 1: some time with you. Thanks coming into Thanks for having
Speaker 1: me of course, Anama's American Express president of Global Commercial Services.
Speaker 1: Terrific interview. Thank you, Caroline. Meanwhile, Boeing has told Bloomberg
Speaker 1: that it's hiring engineers from laid off that have been
Speaker 1: laid off from tech companies take a listen. Many are
Speaker 1: many are. All of them know, many of them are.
Speaker 1: We've never had trouble with that do. I think the
Speaker 1: layoffs make it maybe a little easier, of course, but
Speaker 1: it's still about who you get. It's not an engineers
Speaker 1: an engineer. You're always looking for the best talent in
Speaker 1: the world to take on one of the great missions
Speaker 1: in the world. Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun also told Guy
Speaker 1: Johnson that the company anticipates autonomous airlines in the future.
Speaker 1: He believes it's a matter of when, not if self
Speaker 1: flying planes will become the norm. Mhm. Now, it was
Speaker 1: the first ever e t F focused on n f
Speaker 1: t S non fungible tokens as closing the Definance Digital
Speaker 1: Revolution e t F ticker an f t Z or
Speaker 1: z I'm British launched at the end, but it's going
Speaker 1: to close in February. Why my sarsplomokes as well Lee
Speaker 1: who reported on it. So, I mean we know n
Speaker 1: f t S the demand kind of collapsed. Is that
Speaker 1: why this is then shutting down? It really is. When
Speaker 1: we reached out of the CEO n c O Sylvia Jablanski,
Speaker 1: she's a great person. She said the fund didn't attract assets.
Speaker 1: It was as simple as that, and I guess that's
Speaker 1: just enough reason to close the fund. And you must
Speaker 1: remember that this was launched at the height of everything.
Speaker 1: And if tease digital assets, if you didn't talk that language,
Speaker 1: you weren't cool. And then now where are they? I
Speaker 1: don't even hear any of my friends talk about those anymore.
Speaker 1: And obviously the prices we're talking about AI, yes, the
Speaker 1: process of those have cratered. And so I guess if
Speaker 1: a fund doesn't attract enough, then it just makes sense
Speaker 1: to probably close it. Although because this is something I
Speaker 1: also cover, they say that it's not just you just
Speaker 1: close it. You know, you put a lot of thought
Speaker 1: into it. You probably speak to the management and stuff.
Speaker 1: So I'm pretty sure that they probably saw no future
Speaker 1: for it. I don't want to speak so much for them,
Speaker 1: but that's what the implication is, right, is about? Is
Speaker 1: this speaker is all it ts to have some association
Speaker 1: with crypto, the crypto industry a suffering. Is this a
Speaker 1: broad issue? It kind of is abroad issue, like we're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of crypto related e t f s,
Speaker 1: liquid did. But the thing is funds is a friend
Speaker 1: from the performance. So another crypto et F he wrote
Speaker 1: about is called the Valkyrie Bitcoin E t F. So
Speaker 1: the ticker of that is w g M I. So
Speaker 1: if you can guess, it stands for We're going to
Speaker 1: make it. And that fun was among the best, if
Speaker 1: not the best performer in all of the U S
Speaker 1: E t F industry. It actually doubled, it rose. It
Speaker 1: tracks um a lot of mining companies and some crypto
Speaker 1: related firms. And if you ask why, it's just because
Speaker 1: bitcoins prices around up in January, so it remains to
Speaker 1: be seen. Funds aren't there, but performance of bitcoin is
Speaker 1: there therefore kind of pulling up some of the crypto
Speaker 1: E t F prices. I mean, let's talk about that
Speaker 1: as well, because it kind of feels like a macro's
Speaker 1: story at the moment because a lot of correlation between
Speaker 1: bitcoin as much we many would want to see it
Speaker 1: fall away from just how risk assets perform. It's basically
Speaker 1: training like a risk asset. Is that all about the
Speaker 1: ft at the moment for now? Yes, Actually, there was
Speaker 1: a very interesting that what I read today, it's by
Speaker 1: Arcane Research. So they said that big cooin trades volatility
Speaker 1: in a volatile away every time around the f O
Speaker 1: m C press conference, So they did a minute by
Speaker 1: minute rolling analysis and they found that bitcoin trades more volatile,
Speaker 1: but it has eased a bit ever since the FED
Speaker 1: increased its rate high cycle beginning March. So while it
Speaker 1: increase a bit, it's still volatile, and that's why they
Speaker 1: expect bitcoin to kind of downshift beginning tomorrow and to
Speaker 1: lose momentum, and they expect that for the whole of February.
Speaker 1: So that kind of goes in contrast with the stellar
Speaker 1: January we've seen. And if you ask why, the note
Speaker 1: just really said because the Fed's high fed's rate path
Speaker 1: hike isn't clear yet. We don't know consensus estimates twenty
Speaker 1: five basis point, but passer pivot it remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: And while the decision, I think is largely set in stone,
Speaker 1: a lot of people will really look at the press
Speaker 1: conference and how hawkish Jeran Powell will be. You have
Speaker 1: a wonderful story on the Bloomberg terminal. Bitcoin's rally poised
Speaker 1: to test old adage of don't fight the Fed. Happy
Speaker 1: feedtie to you, Isabelle, is that lesson extendable to broader
Speaker 1: crypto market beyond Bitcoin. I think it is because Bitcoin
Speaker 1: is the biggest and a lot of coins moving lockstep
Speaker 1: with that, so usually you'll see the correlation between Bitcoin
Speaker 1: and Ether, are the second largest coin really close, and
Speaker 1: if Bitcoin falls, chances are that everything will fall with it.
Speaker 1: Although right now Bitcoin is trading around twenty three thousand
Speaker 1: and there's a hefty resistance level at UM, so if
Speaker 1: we break up of that then obviously there would that
Speaker 1: would be an upside for the coin, But for now
Speaker 1: it's been stuck in a tight trading range in the
Speaker 1: last two weeks and UM a lot of analysts are
Speaker 1: really just waiting for the next big macro event. But
Speaker 1: sentiment wise, it's still kind of sad in the crypto space.
Speaker 1: People are pessimistic with all the fallout bankruptcies to scandals,
Speaker 1: but you know, crypto faithfuls are still there as they say,
Speaker 1: we're all going to make it all right. Bloomberg's Isa,
Speaker 1: really thank you so much for joining the show now.
Speaker 1: Shares have so far jumped after the company announced plans
Speaker 1: to reach profitability in three and Bloomberg caught up with
Speaker 1: CEO Anthony no on Monday. Unfortunately, we had a portion
Speaker 1: of the interview that was dated. Here is some of
Speaker 1: Monday's actual wintervial view that we held with no after earnings.
Speaker 1: We're ahead of where we expected to be at this point.
Speaker 1: We've had seven record quarters of revenue in a row
Speaker 1: UM and in this quarter of revenue growth actually accelerated
Speaker 1: to fifty eight percent year year up from fifty one
Speaker 1: percent in Q three, So we ended up exceeding expectations.
Speaker 1: And as we mentioned on the earnings call, we believe
Speaker 1: that the scout that we're driving in revenue will continue
Speaker 1: into twenty three with about twenty five to thirty percent
Speaker 1: year of year growth to a arrangement about one point
Speaker 1: nine billion dollars in revenue to two billion dollars of revenue,
Speaker 1: and that will achieve GAT profitability by the fourth quarter
Speaker 1: of two thousand twenty three. One of the other important
Speaker 1: milestones we achieved this quarter is that our IBADA of
Speaker 1: seven million dollars, which was up significantly versus a year
Speaker 1: ago and contribute to our total for the of one
Speaker 1: three um of EBDA. That seven million dollars is equal
Speaker 1: to our stock based compensation, which is a critical milestone
Speaker 1: to hit on the way to gap profitability. Anthony, the
Speaker 1: optimism the positivity coming out of so far right now
Speaker 1: at a time with a lot of fintech's broadly basically
Speaker 1: being washed out. In addition to as I should say, uh,
Speaker 1: consumer businesses like Goldman of course you're Alma mater their
Speaker 1: markets business for example, do you think those competitive headwinds
Speaker 1: kind of moving to the side is really boosting the
Speaker 1: momentum for your own business now? I think we took
Speaker 1: a very different approach to the market five years ago
Speaker 1: when I joined, and that we wanted to become a
Speaker 1: one stop shop for all the major financial decisions in
Speaker 1: your life and all the days in between. And we
Speaker 1: didn't cherry pick the most popular products at the time
Speaker 1: or the products that we're growing the fastest were the
Speaker 1: ones you can make the most money on. We picked
Speaker 1: all the products that allow us to help you get
Speaker 1: your money right, to help you borrow better, say better,
Speaker 1: spend better, protect better, and invest better. And because we
Speaker 1: were committed to those activities that help you get your
Speaker 1: money right. Over the last five years, we've built a
Speaker 1: durability in our business and a robustness that allows us
Speaker 1: to allocate capital to those businesses that are most in
Speaker 1: need at that moment in time and leaves us less
Speaker 1: vulnerable to different um exogenous factors that we've seen impact
Speaker 1: other companies. That's not to say that we're bulletproof or perfect.
Speaker 1: It just means more more robust and more um I
Speaker 1: think stable, and that allows us to be more durable
Speaker 1: and the strategies really come together. In the last you know,
Speaker 1: two years that was so far Ceo Anthony not are
Speaker 1: now coming up the unicorn trying to bring back the
Speaker 1: do do as in the bird we'll discuss next. This
Speaker 1: is Greenberg. Okay, so this next story is kind of
Speaker 1: something out of a movie, specifically Jurassic part movie, because
Speaker 1: Colossal Biosciences, which just announced a hundred and fifty million
Speaker 1: dollar funding round. The Dallas based setup is trying to
Speaker 1: bring back perhaps the most famously extinct animal of them all,
Speaker 1: the Dodo. Here to explain Colossal's co founder Ben Lamb,
Speaker 1: I mean extraordinary. You You've got a lot of press
Speaker 1: around perhaps bringing back the Willie mammoth. Now it's the Dodo.
Speaker 1: You're raising serious money. Ben, talk to us how you
Speaker 1: do it well? I mean for us, you know, as
Speaker 1: the world's first teak stinction company, I feel like the
Speaker 1: world actually is starting to pay attention not just to
Speaker 1: climate change in the effects that man is having on
Speaker 1: the environment, but loss of biodiversity is now at the
Speaker 1: forefront of a lot of conversations. You know, with COP
Speaker 1: fifteen in some of the great work that came out
Speaker 1: of the World Economic Forum, fifty of all biodiversity could
Speaker 1: go extinct between now and we need better tools, we
Speaker 1: need better technologies, and so we decided to build a company,
Speaker 1: George Church and i UH to build a biosciences and
Speaker 1: synthetic biology company called Colossal Biosciences, which focuses on leveraging
Speaker 1: crisper and other gene editing tools and technologies and advanced
Speaker 1: reproductive technologies in order to bring back these kind of
Speaker 1: iconic keystone species like the wooly mammot, the Tasmanian tiger.
Speaker 1: And then obviously what we're announcing today is our Avian
Speaker 1: Genomics Group UH focusing on the iconic dodo. And so
Speaker 1: our goal with this is to actually bring back these species,
Speaker 1: rewild them back into their natural habitat in partnerships with
Speaker 1: local governments and indigenous people groups UH and and the
Speaker 1: brighter public at large, and then leverage these tools and
Speaker 1: technologies both for human healthcare, and then give all the
Speaker 1: technologies that we developed for conservation away to the world
Speaker 1: so that conservations have more tools in fighting against loss
Speaker 1: of Bouniversity spawned so many other questions, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: many I've got questions about why and how you bring
Speaker 1: them back into into the now world. But I'm interested
Speaker 1: in the money pot, the hundred fifty million. What is
Speaker 1: the reward to invest us here? Is it more about
Speaker 1: the applications for people? It is? And and and you
Speaker 1: know what's interesting is that in science and in the
Speaker 1: great universities there are worldwide, a lot of times you'll
Speaker 1: start working on an individual paper or problem, you'll published
Speaker 1: paper and that's a great point solution, and some of
Speaker 1: those points solutions become incredible companies and incredible innovations or
Speaker 1: healthcare and for human kind as a whole. Well, it's
Speaker 1: really interesting is when you start to look at some
Speaker 1: of these big biology and synthetic biology problems as systems,
Speaker 1: a lot more innovations can come in a lot of
Speaker 1: different areas. So with just the mammoth, for example, we're
Speaker 1: working on computational biology, we're working on cellular engineering, where
Speaker 1: we're working on simpsori programming and advanced gestational technologies. All
Speaker 1: of those could spur additional technology, so very similar to
Speaker 1: the like moon landing or the which was an actual
Speaker 1: moon shot, a lot of create technologies were developed that
Speaker 1: could completely transferred that completely transformed the world, including fundamental
Speaker 1: technologies that allow us ice conversation today. And so earlier
Speaker 1: this year we actually spun out our first technology company
Speaker 1: called form Bio, which is a computational biology platform that
Speaker 1: we did because what we needed just didn't exist in
Speaker 1: the market. We end up raising thirty million dollars for that,
Speaker 1: and that's a huge win for our investors. Hey, Ben,
Speaker 1: you talked about the money. A source told us your
Speaker 1: evaluations now at around one point five Ben, and we
Speaker 1: asked our audience, is this a good use of funds?
Speaker 1: Here's what our audience thinks about that. Frankly, No, they
Speaker 1: think that, you know, research and funding can go into
Speaker 1: bigger problems. Um, I'm gonna ask you the same question
Speaker 1: as Caroline. What is the business model here? Jurassic Cook? No, So,
Speaker 1: I mean for us, it's about developing technologies. Right. If
Speaker 1: you start to look at these things as systems problems,
Speaker 1: you actually can develop a lot of really great technologies.
Speaker 1: In our first six months of business, we developed a technology,
Speaker 1: raised thirty million dollars for it. It's a major technology
Speaker 1: and biogrammatical bioinformatics platform which can be really helpful for
Speaker 1: human healthcare. And so what I would say is there's
Speaker 1: nothing more pressing than climate change and loss of biodiversity,
Speaker 1: and we need more tools. So it's on companies like
Speaker 1: us to educate the public on what the value of
Speaker 1: these tools are, not just in human healthcare into an
Speaker 1: indust returns, but to conservation. Thank you for coming on,
Speaker 1: listening to our questions, giving us some answers. Phil, We've
Speaker 1: got to get you back. Colossal Biosance co founder Ben Lamb,
Speaker 1: we thank you on that funding round and well extraordinary
Speaker 1: applications of the money. Meanwhile, and that does it for
Speaker 1: this edition and a Bloomberg Technology Wednesday, and you've got
Speaker 1: a huge conversations talent here SEEO no less. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm very looking forward to that one. Don't forget recap
Speaker 1: catch our podcast wherever you get its Spotify, I Heeart
Speaker 1: or Apple. A lot to talk about. This is Bloomberg