Speaker 1: Broadcasting live to New York, Bloomberg eleventh to Washington, d C.
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Speaker 1: This is taking stock. Coming up on taking stock Locusts Robotics.
Speaker 1: It's our featured company for the weekly Small Business segment.
Speaker 1: We'll be speaking with Bruce Wealthy. He's the founder of
Speaker 1: Locust Robotics. And if you've purchased anything from Amazon, chances
Speaker 1: are one of their robots has had a hand in it.
Speaker 1: That's all coming up on taking stock right now. Let's
Speaker 1: go to Charlie Pellard in the Bloomberg newsroom for Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business flathand I think if him Fox stocks continue to
Speaker 1: trade in record territory amid corporate results. The point to
Speaker 1: resilience in the global economy. The pound surged out of
Speaker 1: the Bank of England unexpectedly kept its interest rate unchanged
Speaker 1: at zero point five percent. As many as thirty one
Speaker 1: or fifty four economist survey by Bloomberg had forecast a reduction.
Speaker 1: Joachim Phelps his Fells, his global economic advisor at PIMCO.
Speaker 1: He was interviewed this morning on Bloomberg Television. I think
Speaker 1: if you look at today's decision, there was only one
Speaker 1: member who voted for a rate cut, and even he
Speaker 1: who was the most stablished member f league, he voted
Speaker 1: for a twenty five basis points cut. So I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that they'll do all the fifty basis points that
Speaker 1: we expect in one go in August, but I think
Speaker 1: we'll get at least twenty five, and I could even
Speaker 1: see a bigger move like forty or fifty basis points
Speaker 1: in August. Another option for them is to do more queue,
Speaker 1: more asset purchase purchases, mostly guilts, but perhaps also some
Speaker 1: corporate bonds, but I don't think this will be announced
Speaker 1: already in August. Gold is down ten eight denounced thirty two.
Speaker 1: That is a drop of eight tenths of one percent.
Speaker 1: Crude oil back above forty five dollars a barrel forty
Speaker 1: five fifty six right now on West Texas gettermediate of
Speaker 1: eighty cents. That's a gain of one point a cent.
Speaker 1: Ten You're down seventeen thirty seconds. Looking at the yield
Speaker 1: of one point five three percent, Germany's buyer raising its
Speaker 1: offer for Monsanto and a bid the value shares of
Speaker 1: the American company at fifty four point seven billion dollars
Speaker 1: after being rebuffed in its initial efforts to combine operations
Speaker 1: and become the world's biggest supplier of farm chemicals and seeds.
Speaker 1: Monsanto shares up today by two point eight percent. JP
Speaker 1: Morgan Chase beat analysts estimates it shares up now by
Speaker 1: two percent again. Recapping stocks, Hire SMP up ten to
Speaker 1: sixty two, a gain of point five percent, The Dow
Speaker 1: up one thirty three, a gain of points seven percent
Speaker 1: to thirty two on Wall Street. Now, let's take a
Speaker 1: look at some of the other stories making news. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Charlie from the Bloomberg News room. I'm Matt Miller. Conflicting
Speaker 1: reports today about Donald Trump's election of a running mate.
Speaker 1: The New York Times and CDs News say Trump is
Speaker 1: elected Indiana Governor Mike Pence, but The Times also reports
Speaker 1: that Trump could change his mind and that campaign manager
Speaker 1: Paul Manafort says no selection has been made. Trump is
Speaker 1: planning to formally announce his selection tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, The
Speaker 1: Indianapolis Star is reporting that Pence has dropped his reelection
Speaker 1: bid for governor. Top US counter terrorism officials are warning
Speaker 1: that radical activists that next week's Republican convention in Cleveland
Speaker 1: could disrupt otherwise peaceful demonstrations with violence. FBI Director James Comey,
Speaker 1: testifying before the House Homeland Security Committee, notes a particular
Speaker 1: risk from domestic terrorists. There is a concern anytime there's
Speaker 1: an event like this that people from across a spectrum
Speaker 1: of radical groups will be attracted to it, So we're
Speaker 1: watching it very, very carefully. Comey says there will be
Speaker 1: hundreds from the Bureau focused on groups that aspire to
Speaker 1: commit acts of violence. And a close political ally of
Speaker 1: New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has pleaded guilty to a
Speaker 1: federal charge of soliciting a bribe. Prosecutors have been invested
Speaker 1: gating David Sampson, a Christie appointee who was Chairman of
Speaker 1: the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven to two thousand fourteen. Officials say he
Speaker 1: threatened to withhold funding unless United Airlines agreed to provide
Speaker 1: direct air service to make it easier for Sampson to
Speaker 1: get to his vacation home in South Carolina. Global News
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, powered by more than hundred
Speaker 1: journalists and analysts and more than one d twenty countries.
Speaker 1: I'm Matt Miller. This is Bloomberg, Charlie, and we thank
Speaker 1: you and again recapping move higher for US equities SMP
Speaker 1: five hundred index up ten now two, a gain of
Speaker 1: five tenths of one percent. I'm Charlie Pelerton. That's a
Speaker 1: Bloomberg business flash you're listening to taking start with Kathleen
Speaker 1: Hayes and Pim Box on Bloomberg Radio. Sales Days, Amazon
Speaker 1: Prime Sales Days, perhaps netting the company over a billion
Speaker 1: dollars in sales. A lot of those products come from
Speaker 1: where houses. For e commerce retailers, warehouses are essential to
Speaker 1: getting their products to the customer at the right time.
Speaker 1: One of the things they use our robots. And here
Speaker 1: to tell us more about the use of robots in
Speaker 1: logistics and warehouse operations is Bruce Wealthy. He is the
Speaker 1: founder of Locust Robotics. Locust Robotics is our featured company
Speaker 1: today for the Weekly A Small Business segment. Bruce Wealthy,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. Nice to be here. Tell us
Speaker 1: what is a locusts bot like a robot but with locusts.
Speaker 1: What did you do to build this robot? But a
Speaker 1: mobile robot. It's autonomous. It rolls around, um a warehouse
Speaker 1: floor and it maps the floor so it can recognize
Speaker 1: obstacles and racks and people and UM it positions itself
Speaker 1: in front of a pixelot where there might be an
Speaker 1: item that we would like to us to see still
Speaker 1: in order. And uh. It's about two in the round
Speaker 1: and ways about eighty pounds and interacts very very closely
Speaker 1: with people. UM. We actually empower people that do the
Speaker 1: work with with the robots. Now you have described it
Speaker 1: in the past as how these robots operate in what
Speaker 1: you call a giant dispatch system. How does that work? Well?
Speaker 1: The robots are given a task and that task would
Speaker 1: be to go position itself in front of every single
Speaker 1: slot in a warehouse where a pick is required to
Speaker 1: fulfill a specific order, and that could traverse the entire warehouse.
Speaker 1: In fact, we expect that robots to be traveling between
Speaker 1: ten and fifteen miles a day or actually I'll say
Speaker 1: a shift, and they're all um working off the same
Speaker 1: pool of orders, which is optimized to make sure that
Speaker 1: we get the orders out the door when they didn't
Speaker 1: need to go out to fulfill things like the next
Speaker 1: day air and same day shipments you've described in the past. Also,
Speaker 1: they work that the robots have done at two warehouses
Speaker 1: in Boston about five hundred thousand square feet, shipping about
Speaker 1: a billion dollars worth of products annually. You say you
Speaker 1: used ten robots in those two facilities. Is that the
Speaker 1: kind of robotic headcount we can count on? Well, actually,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure where those numbers came from. We intend
Speaker 1: to use considerably more robots than that. We currently have
Speaker 1: two facilities. One runs robots made by Coming called Keep
Speaker 1: the Systems, which is coming that Amazon bot and we
Speaker 1: have two hundred of those robots in one facility and
Speaker 1: the other facility we've partially automated and we have right
Speaker 1: now about twenty operating in there, and we anticipate that
Speaker 1: that will go to about a hundred maybe a hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five. And how much do the robots cost
Speaker 1: all in? If you add all of the software until
Speaker 1: on divided by the number of robots, it comes to
Speaker 1: about each And you mentioned that they work side by
Speaker 1: side with humans. That's correct. They make of human much
Speaker 1: more productive. In fact, we see improvements and productivity in
Speaker 1: the range of five to seven times, which is a
Speaker 1: very big improvement. I would say five hundred seven and
Speaker 1: that significant in this industry because we've been working with
Speaker 1: incremental improvements in the past and the range of ten
Speaker 1: and that was considered a material improvement. So these really
Speaker 1: truly are a big improvement over the state of the
Speaker 1: art today. Can you describe what a warehouse or logistics
Speaker 1: operator needs to do in order to prepare their operation
Speaker 1: for using these kinds of robots. Well, these robots are
Speaker 1: actually very non disruptive to an existing environment. In fact,
Speaker 1: we anticipate that are the only modification we have to
Speaker 1: make to the environment is to place a two dimensional
Speaker 1: barcode that we refer to as a locust point wherever
Speaker 1: you want the robot to be able to navigate to,
Speaker 1: and that makes that point at a point of interest
Speaker 1: and that will represent the locusts of a bunch of
Speaker 1: pick locations. So that's where the word locusts came from.
Speaker 1: And tell us about your company in terms of funding
Speaker 1: and what you'd like to accomplish in the next six months. Well,
Speaker 1: we've got a couple of customers. We UM operate within
Speaker 1: our own warehouses. We own a number of warehouses under
Speaker 1: the our company Quiet Logistics, and in addition to that,
Speaker 1: we've signed our first non Quiet Logistics customer UM. We
Speaker 1: anticipate very fast growth because these are quite easy to deploy,
Speaker 1: and we think you'd take about five weeks to implement
Speaker 1: uh a pilot, and then once the pilot is running,
Speaker 1: then the system can be u enhanced and expanded really
Speaker 1: at whatever pace you want. We anticipate at a typical
Speaker 1: warehouse will need between a hundred and two hundred of
Speaker 1: these robots, between one and two hundred. Yeah, and of
Speaker 1: course if you have a million square feet it will
Speaker 1: be a much larger number than that. But our typical
Speaker 1: e commerce warehouses in the range of two five square feet.
Speaker 1: And just finally, I mean some of the examples of
Speaker 1: companies that use your products, Guilt Benobos, they're all being
Speaker 1: shipped using these robots. Correct, that's correct, We're using We're
Speaker 1: shooting about thirty different customers in our warehouses. Thank you
Speaker 1: very much for spending time with us. Bruce Wealty is
Speaker 1: the founder of Locusts Robotics, joining us from Boston, of course,
Speaker 1: home to Bloomberg twelve hundred am. You're listening to taking Stock.
Speaker 1: I'm pim Fox coming up on taking stock. We're going
Speaker 1: to take stock of buyer and it's bid for monts Santo.
Speaker 1: Will there be competitors? Will the deal go through? We've
Speaker 1: got more details. This is Bloomberg. Small Business in Focus
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