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Speaker 2: Kind of a merger Tuesday, if you will. Es Da
Speaker 2: Latter Companies is in talk to buy pooge brands and
Speaker 2: a deal that would create a cosmetic giant about twenty
Speaker 2: billion dollars in annual sales. Here, let's get some more
Speaker 2: details on this transaction. We're joined by Clara Lizarraga. She
Speaker 2: is company's reporter for Bloomberg News. She is based in Madrid.
Speaker 2: Clara tell us a little bit about pooge brands. Who
Speaker 2: are they and why do you think Esday Lauder is
Speaker 2: in talks to acquire them?
Speaker 3: Hi, Paul, thank you for having me.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 3: Pooje On, like Estilos, gets most of its revenues from fragrances.
Speaker 3: It owns major brands like Carolina Raban, brands that have
Speaker 3: products that have consistently been amongst the top ten best
Speaker 3: selling fragrances. So for essay Loader, it would help strengthen
Speaker 3: their position in this category of fragrances where they currently
Speaker 3: get about seventeen percent of their revenues, And as you said,
Speaker 3: it would create a much larger company with a stronger
Speaker 3: exposure to Europe and Latin America and help it compete
Speaker 3: more efficiently against rivals like Laurel for example.
Speaker 5: So, Clara, I guess the thing with essay latter is
Speaker 5: that this is a company in reorganization mode. It's got
Speaker 5: this plan to focus on niche luxury price fragrances. Does
Speaker 5: buy and Boots fit into that very specific strategy.
Speaker 3: Well exactly, So this is These are some of the
Speaker 3: questions that have that have been asked to so whether
Speaker 3: this is the right time for a stayloader because they're
Speaker 3: in the middle of streamlining operations. They were at some
Speaker 3: point reviewing underperforming brands to see if they could divest
Speaker 3: from some of them and focusing on higher and more
Speaker 3: profitable products. So there are questions about whether a deal
Speaker 3: with Pooje now would one be the right fit and
Speaker 3: also would be the right timing considering these other complex
Speaker 3: problems need to be resolved. The reaction so far so
Speaker 3: stay Lads shares have been falling yesterday and again today,
Speaker 3: So it would seem that these concerns are are definitely
Speaker 3: weighing in.
Speaker 2: And Push is a family owned I know the CEO,
Speaker 2: Mark Push, a member of the founding family, did give
Speaker 2: up that role, but he is executive chairman.
Speaker 6: What role does the family play in this company?
Speaker 3: So the family owned most of the capital and over
Speaker 3: ninety percent of the voting rights. This is the third
Speaker 3: generation of the family and part of the reasons behind
Speaker 3: the IPO that happened less than two years ago was
Speaker 3: that they wanted to plan succession and prevent any tensions
Speaker 3: that could arise relating to generational change by listing the
Speaker 3: company and making sure that the you know, the future
Speaker 3: generations would be owners of the company, but not necessarily
Speaker 3: in operational roles. So in that sense, a deal could
Speaker 3: go in further in that direction. But it also is
Speaker 3: surprising to think that the family would relinquish control over
Speaker 3: this company, which is over one hundred years old.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's so many things to have to kind of
Speaker 5: reconcile here. We talked about how Essay latter would want
Speaker 5: to add to its fragrance line to widen that portfolio.
Speaker 5: But the thing about Pooge is that it also operates
Speaker 5: as you mentioned Carolina Herrera and Nina Ricci. These are
Speaker 5: all fashion brands. They present collections during the Paris Fashion Week.
Speaker 5: Is that something st a Lotter wants to get into
Speaker 5: or is it that something that say Lotter might I
Speaker 5: don't know divest or would that be part of the acquisition.
Speaker 3: I think it would because so in essence, the poo
Speaker 3: strategy has been to buy brands. They make fashion, but
Speaker 3: they also create this image around the brand, and then
Speaker 3: thanks to that they sell the fragrances. So it sort
Speaker 3: of goes together and it's hard to separate the fashion
Speaker 3: from the fragrances. I think in that sense it would
Speaker 3: be complimentary to estay Loader. I guess the question is
Speaker 3: Pooge also has a smaller part of the business that's
Speaker 3: called niche brands, so things like bi Redo, another one
Speaker 3: called Latis on Perfumer and these are much smaller brands
Speaker 3: with higher price higher prices that the company has been
Speaker 3: wanting to scale. But they currently account for roughly ten
Speaker 3: to fifteen percent of revenues according to analysts. So that's
Speaker 3: something that would be interesting to essay Loader that there
Speaker 3: are questions about really how much can that grow and well,
Speaker 3: would they want all of these kinds of fragrances or
Speaker 3: only certain brands?
Speaker 2: Is there any regulatory concern here about this deal getting approved?
Speaker 3: There's some concerns on the makeup side, so Pooh Jones
Speaker 3: are Charlotte Tilbury, which I believe is the third largest
Speaker 3: makeup brand in the US, and so there could be
Speaker 3: issues on that front. But on the f grons front,
Speaker 3: I think it's it's not a problem.
Speaker 6: Stay with us.
Speaker 5: More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
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Speaker 2: One of the things that the Bloomberg Intelligence folks are
Speaker 2: looking at is gaming out a recession scenario. That may
Speaker 2: be a little bit more on the front burner now
Speaker 2: with what's happening in Iran.
Speaker 6: And one of those industries.
Speaker 2: That you really have to be on the outlook for
Speaker 2: should the economy soften is the US auto business. And
Speaker 2: Steve Man joins us here Global Autos and Industrials Research
Speaker 2: channels for Bloomberg Intelligence, joining us live here in our
Speaker 2: Bloomberg at Directive Broker studio. So, Steve, I mean the
Speaker 2: auto business. I mean cyclical business, but also one that's
Speaker 2: undergoing profound transformation, trying to make this transformation to electric vehicles.
Speaker 6: Probably not a lot of spare capital.
Speaker 2: Lining around the cushion during if the economy were to soften.
Speaker 6: How do you guys think about it?
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, the industry did take a lot of write
Speaker 7: offs because you know, the EV sales are not going
Speaker 7: to be what it expected, especially in the UA. And
Speaker 7: we were actually coming into twenty twenty six relatively positive
Speaker 7: for the auto the big Detroit Big three because Trump eliminated,
Speaker 7: you know, the penalties on gas guzzlers. We thought, you know,
Speaker 7: they're gonna you know, these these automakers are going to
Speaker 7: push out these you know, pickup trucks and shuvs with
Speaker 7: high margins. And that's how we came in looking at
Speaker 7: the industry at the being twenty twenty six. And then
Speaker 7: this the war broke out right, and gas prices are
Speaker 7: at where they're at. If you talk to the people
Speaker 7: that actually buy and sell gas oil, it's like one
Speaker 7: hundred and fifty bucks right on the ground. So it's
Speaker 7: gonna it's having a huge impact. Gasoline prices are up
Speaker 7: thirty forty percent where I'm at. So now the talk is,
Speaker 7: you know, are they going to sell that many pickup
Speaker 7: trucks and SUVs?
Speaker 5: Especially with interest rates rising. That means auto loans also
Speaker 5: become more expensive for consumers. But people will still need
Speaker 5: cars and they will still need to upgrade or replace
Speaker 5: their aging vehicles. Where does that leave the automakers? I mean,
Speaker 5: do people go to secondhand cars? Do they take another
Speaker 5: look at hybrids and evs in this environment?
Speaker 7: I think it's a combination of both. The third thing
Speaker 7: that could happen is they keep their cars a little
Speaker 7: bit longer. You know, that's going to benefit companies like
Speaker 7: O'Reilly AutoZone that actually sells after market parts. You know,
Speaker 7: a lot of a lot of consumers, especially in this
Speaker 7: k economy, those are looking who are looking for value
Speaker 7: in affordable vehicles'll will hold off, you know, even if
Speaker 7: interest rates are lower. You know, they they want to
Speaker 7: make sure, you know, the jobs are stable and before
Speaker 7: they spend twenty thirty forty thousand.
Speaker 5: Dollars how much is a new car again on average.
Speaker 7: Average is fifty thousand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'll tell you my boy Joe is car
Speaker 2: in his car repair shop in mask on his lot
Speaker 2: is packed, man. I mean he's got more business what
Speaker 2: to do with. So that goes to your point. Yeah,
Speaker 2: people are keeping the cars longer. You know, if we
Speaker 2: get higher for longer fuel prices, does that revive maybe
Speaker 2: some demand in EV's and the hybrids.
Speaker 7: It might look We actually looked at figure out when
Speaker 7: looked at what the worst case scenario is. We looked
Speaker 7: at past oil shock all the way back to you know,
Speaker 7: the Iranian revolution back in the seventies, and we're coming
Speaker 7: up with Okay, worst case sales in the US could
Speaker 7: drop as much as fifteen percent. Now the pie is shrinking,
Speaker 7: but even within that pie, the split is changing definitely.
Speaker 7: I think it's no surprise if oil prices are high,
Speaker 7: it has happened in the past, people will be more
Speaker 7: interested in hybrids and this time around, you know, battery
Speaker 7: evs as well.
Speaker 5: Stay with us more from Bloomberg Intelligence coming.
Speaker 6: Up after this.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
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Speaker 2: One of the issues from an M and A perspective
Speaker 2: with the second Trump administration is this is going to
Speaker 2: be a very good time to get M and A done.
Speaker 6: The regulation the regulators.
Speaker 2: Whether it be the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice,
Speaker 2: maybe be more accommodative. And I was certainly the expectation,
Speaker 2: and I from what I understand, that's turning out to.
Speaker 6: Be the truth.
Speaker 2: And we want to focus on one particular deal because
Speaker 2: it's a deal that I'm very familiar with having covered
Speaker 2: the media industry for a while, and that is next Star,
Speaker 2: big TV station owner, buying Tegna. Another big TV station owner,
Speaker 2: Jennifer re joins us. She's senior litigation and analyst from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Intelligence, joining us live here in our studio. So
Speaker 2: as I understand it, Next Star again, a huge owner
Speaker 2: of TV stations across the country, hundreds of them close
Speaker 2: its purchase of Tech, which are the old TV stations
Speaker 2: owned by Gannett Company, the newspaper company that closed. Yes,
Speaker 2: from the regulators like the Federal Communication Commission, the Justice Department.
Speaker 6: Blessed the deal as people thought they would.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's this administration. But there's still some suits
Speaker 2: going on. What's going on with.
Speaker 8: That right, So that expectation that the Department of Justice
Speaker 8: and Federal Communications Commission will go ahead and allow that
Speaker 8: deal to go forward, I think ramped up a group
Speaker 8: of states to be ready to try to go after
Speaker 8: this deal. And it's because the states have been saying
Speaker 8: many states have been saying, and not just democratic state
Speaker 8: attorneys general, but in a bipartisan way. The states have
Speaker 8: been saying, if this administration lacks anti trust enforcement, if
Speaker 8: they start allowing a lot of consolidation across many industries,
Speaker 8: we're going to pick up the slack because states have
Speaker 8: the right to enforce federal anti trust laws and they
Speaker 8: have the right to go after a merger that they
Speaker 8: believe is unlawful under the anti trust laws, just as
Speaker 8: the Department of Justice or Federal Trade Commission do. So
Speaker 8: that's what we're seeing here. You have eight states that
Speaker 8: have said this wasn't right for different reasons. The FCC
Speaker 8: approval was improper for certain reasons, the Department of Justice
Speaker 8: clearance was improper for other reasons, and we're going to
Speaker 8: go ahead and go to court to try to see
Speaker 8: what we can do here.
Speaker 2: I've been doing this mediam and a thing for a
Speaker 2: long time. I've never really seen this before. I'm sure
Speaker 2: it's been out there. So this is basically the state saying,
Speaker 2: for what a reason the federal governments from our perspective,
Speaker 2: from our point of view, is not as as strong
Speaker 2: a regulators it needs to be there for, We're going
Speaker 2: to pick up the slack and do it from a
Speaker 2: state level.
Speaker 6: Yes, have we seen this before? Not a lot.
Speaker 8: Normally, the states are sort of aligned with the Department
Speaker 8: of Justice or any of these agencies that are reviewing
Speaker 8: a deal.
Speaker 6: We have one.
Speaker 8: Example from several years ago when T Mobile and Sprint
Speaker 8: merged that they settled with the Department of Justice. They
Speaker 8: divested some assets to Dish and the Department of Justice
Speaker 8: went ahead and cleared the deal. The FCC cleared the deal,
Speaker 8: and the states went to court. A group of states
Speaker 8: I don't remember exactly how many, I think it might
Speaker 8: have been round ten went to court to try to
Speaker 8: block that deal. And you know a lot of people
Speaker 8: would say, and I'll say in this case too for
Speaker 8: next Star, that once you have the federal regulators that
Speaker 8: have approved these deals. It is very difficult for the
Speaker 8: states to then go into court and convince a judge
Speaker 8: that the experts that cleared the deal were wrong. The
Speaker 8: states lost in the T mobile sprint effort, and you know,
Speaker 8: we don't know yet what's going to happen with Nextstar,
Speaker 8: but they do go in with a tough case to
Speaker 8: make once the FCC and dj have approved, which they have.
Speaker 2: So are they doing this these states? And you say
Speaker 2: it's bipartisans So it's not just democratic states that maybe
Speaker 2: wanted to just go against this administration's regulatory policy.
Speaker 8: I think in this case it may simply be democratic
Speaker 8: states the ones that have sued Nextar. We also have
Speaker 8: states that have are continuing litigation against Live Nation that
Speaker 8: originally the Department of Justice had joined them with was
Speaker 8: the lead plaintiff. The Department of Justice settled with one
Speaker 8: week of trial. The states on a bipartisan in a
Speaker 8: bipartisan way, have gone forward to continue that litigation. So
Speaker 8: we are seeing bipartisan efforts in that area. With the
Speaker 8: Next Star Tegna, I'd have to look at those eight
Speaker 8: states to see the attorney generals whether they are Democrats,
Speaker 8: or Republicans.
Speaker 2: If your Next Star you close this deal, if you
Speaker 2: pay Tegna the money.
Speaker 6: Yes, Is there any risk to Next.
Speaker 2: Star that somebody, some judge could say you got to
Speaker 2: unwind this thing.
Speaker 6: I think that risk is low.
Speaker 8: I think actually getting an order saying you must unwind
Speaker 8: this is low. If there's some kind of a liability
Speaker 8: decision yet this deal was anti competitive, my guess would
Speaker 8: be the more likely outcome would be some divestitures of stations,
Speaker 8: which is honestly what I thought would have happened with
Speaker 8: this deal with the Department of Justice to start, if
Speaker 8: it had followed kind of its long standing tradition with
Speaker 8: respect to TV broadcaster deals. Usually, the Department of Justice
Speaker 8: would ask these companies, including Nexttar, which has divested all
Speaker 8: sorts of stations doing deals in the past, to divest
Speaker 8: in a local area called a DMA in this case,
Speaker 8: to divest if they would own more than one of
Speaker 8: the local affiliates of the Big Four, which are NBCCBS, Fox, ABC.
Speaker 2: And that rule today, having done a million broadcasting M
Speaker 2: and A deals in my life, seems so antiquated to
Speaker 2: that it was antiquated twenty years ago. But now with
Speaker 2: all the streaming, and I mean it's like, who cares.
Speaker 8: Well, that's the argument the defendants will make, and that's
Speaker 8: what the Federal Communication Said Commission said in part in
Speaker 8: approving this deal. But I will say that there was
Speaker 8: an Eighth Circuit decision about the FCC's every four years
Speaker 8: it reviews its rules, about its review of its rules,
Speaker 8: and that narrow market definition focused on those broadcast stations
Speaker 8: in the Big Four was challenged, and the Eighth Circuit
Speaker 8: didn't reject that. They rejected rules changes for different reasons,
Speaker 8: but not because of that market definition. And the thing is, Paul,
Speaker 8: I know viewership has changed radically, right in the last
Speaker 8: ten twenty years. You've got all the cord cutters. You
Speaker 8: have people who've never even heard of a cable subscription.
Speaker 8: But you still have a set of consumers that get
Speaker 8: those cable subscriptions or FiOS or whatever it is. They
Speaker 8: want those local stations, if they want sports, they want
Speaker 8: the local programming they can get. And if you have
Speaker 8: a discrete set of consumers that could be harmed because
Speaker 8: prices go up, it can still be an ag trust harm.
Speaker 6: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
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Speaker 1: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android
Speaker 1: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
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Speaker 2: Switch gears. We'll go to healthcare, as we like to do.
Speaker 2: There's always news coming out of the healthcare business. There's
Speaker 2: always M and A trades and this is no different.
Speaker 2: Pfizer trying new They've been working on a line disease
Speaker 2: drug here and they recently had I think they had
Speaker 2: a study. It didn't really impress too much, but I'll
Speaker 2: tell you, in this part of the country, lime diseases
Speaker 2: no joke, boy, A lot of people.
Speaker 6: Get it debilitated.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and it affects you for life, even if you
Speaker 5: get over the worst of it in the first two years.
Speaker 6: So there's just another air.
Speaker 2: We're kind of waiting for the great science of the
Speaker 2: pharmaceutical and biotech industry to come to the rescue.
Speaker 6: Sam Fazelli joints just Bloomberg Intelligence, director.
Speaker 2: Of Research for Global Industries and a senior pharma analyst
Speaker 2: for Bloomberg. So, Sam, what's going on with Pfizer, What's
Speaker 2: going on broadly with this little niche field of limes disease.
Speaker 4: Lime disease, Paul.
Speaker 9: So all those farmers and folks who go out into
Speaker 9: fields have a risk of that. Of course, anyone who
Speaker 9: goes out into a into a green space, and you
Speaker 9: know I've got a bit of a garden, I'm sure
Speaker 9: you do. And those ticks, man, they do like your
Speaker 9: legs and anything that's nice and hidden in there to
Speaker 9: go and have a bite at. And all your animals
Speaker 9: suffer from it, et cetera. So those animals can take
Speaker 9: drugs to prevent ticks, but there's really no such thing
Speaker 9: for humans. And I mean the vaccines have been around,
Speaker 9: but lime disease vaccine is something that would really be
Speaker 9: quite an attractive option for those who are at risk.
Speaker 9: The question is would take a lime this vaccine? But
Speaker 9: these guys had some data. It's data from a vaccine
Speaker 9: that they're developing with a French partner called Valeva. It
Speaker 9: has been in development for a while and I'm just
Speaker 9: reading the details here again off the screen on the
Speaker 9: blueberog terminal seventy three percent effective against the tickborne illness,
Speaker 9: which of course can be as bad as in supply
Speaker 9: tast and causing major then longer term issues. So the
Speaker 9: few problem with seventy three percent, I mean, you know,
Speaker 9: is that good enough these days? I mean, think about
Speaker 9: the COVID. COVID vaccines now are in background of people
Speaker 9: having lots of COVID infections, are in the fifty to
Speaker 9: sixty seventy percent range effective against hospitalization. Now that's on
Speaker 9: the background of lots of COVID infections. Here you're not
Speaker 9: you're testing it literally against somebody having no immunity. So
Speaker 9: seventy percent is not particularly high. So it'd be very
Speaker 9: interesting to see what they're regulator to say about this.
Speaker 6: Sam. I'm kind of confused.
Speaker 5: Why are there no current human vacs scenes from lime
Speaker 5: disease on the market. I mean, there was something I
Speaker 5: believe back in on late nineteen nineties from GSK, But
Speaker 5: this seems like something that's there's a real demand for efficacy.
Speaker 4: We need efficacy, we need the effectiveness.
Speaker 9: Sorry, in vaccine world, I've forgotten now all those years
Speaker 9: of writing about COVID you need vaccine effectiveness, which is
Speaker 9: how much does it protect you, how long does it
Speaker 9: protect you for? So this is something that I think
Speaker 9: would be interesting to see whether this result is better
Speaker 9: than what folks had been used to. But again, if
Speaker 9: you took this, you're only three quarters of the way.
Speaker 9: Let's say protect it and I'd like to see the data.
Speaker 9: How long does it last? Do you need another shot?
Speaker 9: Who takes this? I mean, do we want to everybody?
Speaker 9: I mean people are hardly taking infectious vaccines where they
Speaker 9: can pick it up in the subway.
Speaker 4: Are they going to worry about this? Take this?
Speaker 2: Those are questions right astim At the beginning of President
Speaker 2: trump second term, there really a lot of threats towards
Speaker 2: universities and maybe some of their medical research. Has that
Speaker 2: in fact come to fruition. Our funds being withheld or
Speaker 2: funds being pulled. Is that impacting university research?
Speaker 9: There has been some more uncertainty created funds not being released.
Speaker 9: There's been a lot of those situations arising. Of course,
Speaker 9: it's not just grants going to universities. It's also direct investments,
Speaker 9: for instance by the NIH which has a huge budget
Speaker 9: and age gives us grounds.
Speaker 4: But they also have research institutes, Institute for this, institute
Speaker 4: for that. So there has been some effects. People are worried.
Speaker 9: The number of people seeking to do PhDs in the
Speaker 9: STEM world has declined. I don't know what the latest
Speaker 9: statistic is, but has definitely declined. And that's really not
Speaker 9: helpful because it is this foundation of science that then.
Speaker 4: Builds the future innovations. Right.
Speaker 9: I don't think that that's I don't think that's rocket science, right.
Speaker 9: So I don't know why this became such a big thing,
Speaker 9: but I'm wondering whether it was just noise and it
Speaker 9: was playing to the public and this kind of eventually
Speaker 9: going to dissipate and go back to what it normally was.
Speaker 4: And of course Congress needs to get in there.
Speaker 9: You've seen him, for instance, Quurt's coming back saying what
Speaker 9: the HCHS has done isn't right for vaccines, et cetera.
Speaker 4: So maybe this will happen here too.
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