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Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg business Week inside from the reporters and
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Speaker 2: Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend podcast.
Speaker 1: From the opening ceremony of the twenty twenty four Olympics
Speaker 1: in Paris and a tech sell off that on Wednesday
Speaker 1: wiped away one trillion dollars in market value from the
Speaker 1: Nasdaq one hundred to a strong USGDP report and a
Speaker 1: flood of corporate earnings, including the first of the Magnificent
Speaker 1: Sevens to report. Tim this past.
Speaker 3: Week, it was a lot, It really was.
Speaker 4: You didn't even I'm tired.
Speaker 5: I didn't even mention politics.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there is that.
Speaker 4: Nothing happened in there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, nothing happened. Hey, I'm on the business side of things.
Speaker 5: This first, what you need to know about results from
Speaker 5: at least one of the mag sevens alphabet and then
Speaker 5: with a snapshot on the consumer side, Whirlpool CEO on
Speaker 5: the quarter end, whether or not the company's in play.
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, we mentioned the Olympics. They are underway
Speaker 1: in Paris. We are already setting our sites on twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight, when the games are in Los Angeles. So
Speaker 1: too is the city of Oklahoma.
Speaker 4: Wait, what we're gonna explain?
Speaker 5: All of that to come? We begin, though, with one
Speaker 5: of the big earnings of the week. Alphabet, the parent
Speaker 5: company of Google, saw shares drop after it's sunk more
Speaker 5: resources into its drive to outmatch rivals in AI, fueling
Speaker 5: spending higher than analysts expected.
Speaker 1: We love AI, we don't love AI. Don't do it
Speaker 1: too much? Do it a lot? What should we do?
Speaker 1: That's kind of where we are, all right? Even so,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Intelligence senior tech industry analystman Deep Singh says Alphabet
Speaker 1: could see margin improvement in the second half despite the
Speaker 1: CAPEX concern.
Speaker 6: I think search once again performed very well. It was
Speaker 6: better than consensus. And with Alphabet, whenever search beats consensus,
Speaker 6: you know the operating margin beat will come. And that
Speaker 6: was the same here. The only number that disappointed was
Speaker 6: a YouTube ass revenue.
Speaker 5: That was surprising.
Speaker 1: And I watched a lot of YouTube.
Speaker 5: I don't know what tell us one because you can
Speaker 5: pay to get rid of the ass.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we watched so up until last quarter they made
Speaker 6: it up through better YouTube subscription sales. Now that doesn't
Speaker 6: seem to be the case because the YouTube subscription number
Speaker 6: is reported alongside the app store revenue, so it's hard
Speaker 6: to unpack whether that was the weak part or the
Speaker 6: app store revenue was a weak link. But clearly YouTube
Speaker 6: was a disappointing segment and the.
Speaker 5: Results investors don't seem that disappointed. I mean, shares of
Speaker 5: Google right now, they're bouncing between red and grain, but
Speaker 5: I mean we're talking small moves, and look, is this
Speaker 5: like a kind of Hoham earnings report?
Speaker 6: I think, Look when I look at search growing mid teens,
Speaker 6: that just tells me, you know, a company with two
Speaker 6: hundred billion dollars run rate in search business ninety percent
Speaker 6: market share still manages to grow double did.
Speaker 5: So it's it's experimental. AI is working, it's.
Speaker 6: Working, and it's maintaining market share despite competition from Chat, gpt.
Speaker 7: Being, you name it. Everyone keeps talking about.
Speaker 5: They just said being is there really competition from being?
Speaker 6: Well, Bing has integrated chat cipt now, so that was
Speaker 6: what Satyannadella was most.
Speaker 5: Excited about I am curious about the lack of ads
Speaker 5: that I see when I look for when I do
Speaker 5: a Google search and I see the experimental AI result,
Speaker 5: it doesn't seem like they're making money from me.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but if you go back in time, Google only
Speaker 6: monetized seventy like seventy percent of their queries are not monetized,
Speaker 6: only thirty percent hour monetized.
Speaker 7: And that too.
Speaker 6: It's a very keyword driven business, so you know, people
Speaker 6: bid up for keywords. That's what drives the ad pricing.
Speaker 6: And in this case, you know, unlike social media that
Speaker 6: can increase ad loads, Google is not increasing ad loads.
Speaker 6: It's still key driven, and they're able to maintain that share,
Speaker 6: you know, despite Chat GPT coming in and for certain queries,
Speaker 6: I'm sure people are going more to chat ChiPT then
Speaker 6: coming to traditional search. But I mean, I think Google
Speaker 6: has a competing offering with Gemini Advance and that will
Speaker 6: be a subscription revenues stream down the line. So in short,
Speaker 6: they've been able to maintain their market share despite all
Speaker 6: the threat and I think that's good news.
Speaker 1: For Stock is down about one percent here in the aftermarket,
Speaker 1: but it's been bouncing around. Stocks up about thirty percent
Speaker 1: year to day forward pe of twenty four, Alphabet is
Speaker 1: game more than sixteen percent. Since it's blowout first quarter
Speaker 1: report and Red Brann, I want to bring you into
Speaker 1: it watching it as well, you know, join the conversation
Speaker 1: here with Mandeep. I mean, I'm wondering too if this
Speaker 1: is a quarter that you know safely easily lives up
Speaker 1: to expectations.
Speaker 8: I think man deep rely hit on the Obviously, the
Speaker 8: two biggest things that jumped off the page to me
Speaker 8: as well, which was search and YouTube coming in a
Speaker 8: little softer. But the other thing that's really jumping out
Speaker 8: to me is actually kaebacs. If we think about, you know,
Speaker 8: how are they competing with these other companies on gen Ai.
Speaker 8: That's where we'll see that investment. And from what I
Speaker 8: can see, Capex coming thirteen billion, that's I think the
Speaker 8: biggest ever for Alphabet. I think that kind of really
Speaker 8: speaks to where they are headed and kind of another
Speaker 8: doubling down on this commitment and it seems to be
Speaker 8: paying off. So between the search business continuing to grow
Speaker 8: despite its size. Yeah, definitely interesting there.
Speaker 6: I just wanted to since he brought up Capex. You know,
Speaker 6: Capex is directly related to their cloud revenue. So the
Speaker 6: fact that cloud sales grew twenty nine percent, that capex
Speaker 6: is paying off and you know money well spent, basically
Speaker 6: money well spent. And actually cloud margins grew six hundred
Speaker 6: and fifty basis points. So for the longest time Alphabet
Speaker 6: was criticized because cloud wasn't making money, it was a
Speaker 6: drag on profitability. Well guess what, in just the past
Speaker 6: two three quarters they have shown over five hundred basis
Speaker 6: point of margin expansion in the business. And that seems
Speaker 6: to be the trend I think based on the they're
Speaker 6: saying this will continue.
Speaker 1: Well, this is what we always talk about, right because
Speaker 1: they behind what Microsoft and Amazon right have lagged in
Speaker 1: terms of the cloud. This shows what that they're making progress.
Speaker 6: Well, they had a slower start, so they were always
Speaker 6: the third player, the distant third player. But look at
Speaker 6: the cloud revenue run right now forty billion dollars. Compare
Speaker 6: that to Microsoft Azure seventy six billion and Amazon Aws
Speaker 6: one hundred billion. But at least they are growing thirty percent.
Speaker 6: So we'll find out whether Microsoft Azure is also growing
Speaker 6: thirty percent, but we know Amazon Aws is growing seventeen percent,
Speaker 6: so clearly their faster growth will help them narrow that.
Speaker 8: Gap and deep speaking of AWS and Microsoft, what do
Speaker 8: these results tell you about what we should expect for
Speaker 8: those companies when they report later this this quarter.
Speaker 6: I think for Microsoft Azure again, it's going to be
Speaker 6: a very strong quarter. You will see more than thirty
Speaker 6: percent growth. And Microsoft actually quantifies the contribution from generative
Speaker 6: AI workloads last quarter was seven percentage points. I'm expecting
Speaker 6: it will be slightly hired this quarter, but clearly that's
Speaker 6: where it spend is going is in you know, the
Speaker 6: generative AI workloads. And I think Microsoft will do better
Speaker 6: than Ada BLUs because Ada BLUs has been coming from
Speaker 6: behind when it comes to generative AIS.
Speaker 5: Okay, it's not just Alphabet, but one company that is
Speaker 5: seeing a more significant reaction. Adjusted earnings per share for
Speaker 5: the second quarter missed the average channel in the estimate.
Speaker 5: They're also getting quite a bit of information on the
Speaker 5: in from the long presentation about how many cars they
Speaker 5: plan to deliver, fewer than the one point eight million
Speaker 5: cars they delivered in twenty twenty three. I know you
Speaker 5: guys are here to talk about Alphabet, but we can't
Speaker 5: let you leave without talking a little bit about what
Speaker 5: we saw with Tesla, Mandy, what sticks out to you.
Speaker 6: I mean, look, with Tesla, the fact that they shifted
Speaker 6: out the robotaxi event. That's where all the excitement was.
Speaker 6: And you know right now, I mean they don't have
Speaker 6: a near term catalyst. Everyone is excited about AI. That
Speaker 6: is where they could have shown their AI. I mean,
Speaker 6: I know, humanoid robots are also a big deal, but
Speaker 6: they gave a date and then backed off. So to me,
Speaker 6: you know, if that's that was never a good sign
Speaker 6: going into the print.
Speaker 1: What about for you read?
Speaker 8: Well, I think it's interesting that the thing to get
Speaker 8: excited about is kind of this pie and the sky
Speaker 8: idea of a robotaxi that no one has really been
Speaker 8: able to successfully monetize yet. I think that kind of
Speaker 8: speaks to where the company is at, maybe get in
Speaker 8: a little bit away from its true mission, which has
Speaker 8: always been selling evs.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 8: But I think there are some positives to take away
Speaker 8: from the support. They did improve. They did actually beat
Speaker 8: gross marchin expectations. I think that's gonna be really important
Speaker 8: for investors going forward, is how can this company continue
Speaker 8: to trim expenses if they aren't going to be seeing
Speaker 8: really aggressive top line growth as they were in the past,
Speaker 8: So good to see them focusing there on improving the
Speaker 8: efficiency a little bit.
Speaker 1: All right, So just to wrap up, top question for
Speaker 1: Tesla that you would make on the call real quickly.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's got to be the roadmap to continuing
Speaker 8: Where where does this robotaxi? When, where is the robotaxi,
Speaker 8: when is it coming? And again where the is there
Speaker 8: anywhere we can continue trim costs we've read.
Speaker 5: Just show me the robotax that elon that I want.
Speaker 1: To know about, the mass market car that's going to
Speaker 1: like sell tons on.
Speaker 5: Some model three.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 7: I'm ahead.
Speaker 6: Investors care about FSD software attach rate. That's where the margins.
Speaker 5: Attach rate real quick.
Speaker 6: So attach rate is any Tesla av owner that buys
Speaker 6: the software, so you know attaches. If I end up
Speaker 6: buying twelve thousand dollars of FSD software for autonomous driving,
Speaker 6: that's like ninety percent plus growth margin. That's what investors
Speaker 6: get excited about Tesla because they think that bramp will
Speaker 6: continue to grow, the attachmate will continue.
Speaker 5: The software company. We got a car, come ten seconds.
Speaker 1: Top question for alphabet on the call alphabet.
Speaker 6: It's really about cloud growth. I mean, how fast can
Speaker 6: it grow and how long the durability of that cloud growth.
Speaker 6: The thirty percent cloud growth unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Men deep saying a Bloomberg Intelligence and Bloomberg News earnings
Speaker 1: are put a red brown. Guys, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: so appreciate it. This is Bloomberg Business Week.
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Speaker 1: Staying with earnings, worl Pool, you know, the owner of
Speaker 1: Maytag and others, lowered its full ear earnings forecast as
Speaker 1: consumers continue to shy away from big ticket appliance purchases
Speaker 1: and at a weakening housing market. Right after earnings crossed,
Speaker 1: we checked in with the chairman presidency of Warlpool, Mark Bitzer.
Speaker 9: We actually feel good about our Q two, you know.
Speaker 9: We we said also after bo Q one call, this
Speaker 9: here is all going to be about margin expansion with
Speaker 9: every quarter, and Q two was a sizable sequential margin
Speaker 9: improvement full point on a global level, led by all
Speaker 9: important North America business which ultimately relied also on getting
Speaker 9: better promotion pricing. So we feel good about the progress
Speaker 9: we made. Yet at the same time, we also, you know,
Speaker 9: knowing the weakness of a housing market which is still
Speaker 9: emphasis on still just there. We don't see the housing
Speaker 9: market recovering as fast as we were reached assumed probably
Speaker 9: like everybody else when we entered the year. So we're
Speaker 9: still forecasting for Q three and Q four Berber margin
Speaker 9: expansion and improvement. So we feel good about the progression.
Speaker 9: It just not happening at the pace which we had
Speaker 9: originally in mind. That the market is not recovering at
Speaker 9: the pace which we already had in mind. But that's
Speaker 9: in my view only question when it happens, not if
Speaker 9: it happens. It will happen, but it just later when
Speaker 9: we originally assumed.
Speaker 1: So you know, I always feel like when we talk
Speaker 1: with you, Mark, you know, we think about like the
Speaker 1: pre pandemic world, the pandemic world, and like our recovery
Speaker 1: in terms of some of the numbers, the consumer trends,
Speaker 1: the buying patterns. Is it below what we saw pre pandemic?
Speaker 9: You know, Carol, you have two almost offsetting trends. One
Speaker 9: is the replacement market, which is very strong ostal volume
Speaker 9: site and that is ultimately tied to increase the client's
Speaker 9: usage following COVID and just all of the in home
Speaker 9: trends and people just spending more time in home. So
Speaker 9: replacement side is very strong. The unfortunate side from a
Speaker 9: business perspective, that typically doesn't come with a rich mix
Speaker 9: because it's not a discretionary purchase. The discretionary side that
Speaker 9: is all tied towards housing existing home sales and new
Speaker 9: home sales, and that's the part which is way soft
Speaker 9: when anybody assumed at this point, and frankly also with
Speaker 9: the numbers which came out yesterday on existing home sales
Speaker 9: put back back to two or eight levels, I mean,
Speaker 9: it's kind of multi decade low.
Speaker 7: And of course that is the part.
Speaker 9: Of a business which tends to come with a richer
Speaker 9: mix for us, and that's the soft part. So you
Speaker 9: have two offsetting trends which kind of overlay. I mean,
Speaker 9: we would, of course going forward, we love to see
Speaker 9: a replacement trend, but at one point you will see
Speaker 9: a recovery of discretionary side.
Speaker 1: We've talked with you about this replacement versus you know, discretionary.
Speaker 1: What's the bigger part of your business? Is there people
Speaker 1: replacing items or saying, hey, I feel like doing this discretionary.
Speaker 9: Right now, the replacement side is well over sixty percent.
Speaker 9: And put that in a storic context, I mean you
Speaker 9: typicate it for multi decades on around fifty or in
Speaker 9: below fifty percent. That doesn't sound like a whole lot,
Speaker 9: but it actually makes it big ference in how and
Speaker 9: how a mix comes through for your overall business. So
Speaker 9: again that's that's you know, we like the volume, but
Speaker 9: it's it's not a very rich mix.
Speaker 5: The biggest part of your your market or the biggest
Speaker 5: part of your business in terms of segments, Refrigeration, laundry,
Speaker 5: cooking a close third. Where are you going to where
Speaker 5: do you see the most growth?
Speaker 9: You know, again, it's right now. Overall it's it's split
Speaker 9: on mechagory. It's large in replacement, so laundry is still
Speaker 9: very strong, Refrigeration, the kitchen is still a little bit
Speaker 9: soft because that comes with a replacement or remodel of
Speaker 9: an entire kitchen. But you know it's it's it's more
Speaker 9: behinhend the entire kitchen suite like Kitchen Aid suite or
Speaker 9: Danner suite, which is right now software when we would
Speaker 9: expect in an rmous cycle.
Speaker 1: All right, so we be remiss by not addressing the
Speaker 1: elephant in the kitchen or if you will. Last month,
Speaker 1: Whirlpool shares, you know, jumped ruterers had reported that Robert
Speaker 1: Bosch was considering a bit for the company that they've
Speaker 1: been pushing, you know, that company's been pushing kind of
Speaker 1: outside its business. Did it make a bit for the company?
Speaker 1: What can you tell us about that?
Speaker 9: Unfortunately, I can't tell you a whole lot more than
Speaker 9: we stated already. Is that we just don't as a policy,
Speaker 9: we don't comment on rumors of market speculation. As you know,
Speaker 9: it's it's been one article out there which triggered a
Speaker 9: lot of noise, and you know, we awesome in the past.
Speaker 9: There were rumors about vote Pool in the past, and
Speaker 9: there will be rumors about Pool going forward. We just
Speaker 9: don't speculate on and comment on this one. So unfortunately,
Speaker 9: I know you were pokem this one, but I can't
Speaker 9: tell you a whole lot.
Speaker 1: I have to poke a little bit more though. Is
Speaker 1: it is it a rumor? I mean, is the company
Speaker 1: for sale at this point, and is that something that
Speaker 1: maybe you've been getting some pressure from investors.
Speaker 9: No, so again it is a rumor and we can't
Speaker 9: comment and we won't comment on this specific rumor. You know,
Speaker 9: but we're public listed company, Carol say by definition, you know,
Speaker 9: very in a certain mayle companies for sale every morning
Speaker 9: at nine thirty stock market opens.
Speaker 2: Right now.
Speaker 9: It's a good deal, you know, but.
Speaker 1: There's sales and then there's sales. You know how this goes.
Speaker 5: You're you're joking about saying it's a good deal. But
Speaker 5: what in your opinion do you think investors are missing
Speaker 5: about the Whirlpool story right now? Down nineteen percent so
Speaker 5: far this year.
Speaker 9: I shouldn't be arrogant about the investor. The market is
Speaker 9: always right. So what I think the argument for wopuld
Speaker 9: to be made is, yes, of course we're still emphasis
Speaker 9: on still in a negative macrocycle, but that will turn
Speaker 9: at one point and built I eve a US housing
Speaker 9: market and that will not be just a you know,
Speaker 9: a short recovery. That will be probably a multi year
Speaker 9: recovery of a housing market. There's literally not a single
Speaker 9: company better position to benefit from the upside where the
Speaker 9: key supplier of eight out of the top ten US builders.
Speaker 9: We're very strong with our portfolio in all the homes.
Speaker 9: So once web market recovers, I think we will be
Speaker 9: a disproportionate beneficiary from a market. And you know that's
Speaker 9: my definition of market is always right. But I would
Speaker 9: say that's the argument, particularly for a long term investor.
Speaker 5: Hey, Mark, we also have to go on that though.
Speaker 1: If the marketerter right, your stock rallied in a big
Speaker 1: way in June on this Reuter's report that Bosh was considering,
Speaker 1: we're still.
Speaker 5: She's still poking. She's poking.
Speaker 1: So if the market's always right that they were excited
Speaker 1: about a deal, does it make sense to you?
Speaker 9: I appreciate your relentless but I can't and I won't
Speaker 9: tell you a whole lot more. Listen, you know there's
Speaker 9: there's always speculation element, but you might get in the
Speaker 9: stock and as you know, there's there's short trade and
Speaker 9: and and people who are kind of not long term
Speaker 9: investors right now. Again, it's we had also these speculation
Speaker 9: rumors in the past and again I expect them also
Speaker 9: in the future, and that's that's just the nature of
Speaker 9: a public there's the company. But again there's no you
Speaker 9: won't get a whole lot more for me on these rumors.
Speaker 5: Okay, Mark, Well, and on something really easy for you
Speaker 5: to answer, US politics. I know, I know, please come
Speaker 5: back after all these questions, we still love you. Please,
Speaker 5: So look, no question front center and a lot of
Speaker 5: a lot of investors' minds and a lot of voters' minds.
Speaker 5: But just very briefly, does it matter to you you
Speaker 5: have a really complicated supply chain, you do some importing.
Speaker 5: Does it matter to you who's in the White House?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 9: You know obviously as you can tell for my accent,
Speaker 9: I should be careful about giving advice on US politics.
Speaker 9: But I also I'm firmly believe as a company we
Speaker 9: encourage our employees to form a political opinion and they
Speaker 9: should vote. But I'm not going to endorse any candidate
Speaker 9: left or right. It just but we strong encourage our
Speaker 9: people to form their opinion, get informed, and vote period.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 9: Of course, with our strong US exposure also the manufacturing side,
Speaker 9: we're not only the last American appliance company, but we
Speaker 9: have by long shot the most jobs in the US
Speaker 9: un appliance manufacturer. Of course, we have a strong vested
Speaker 9: interest in having a competitive and fair level playing field
Speaker 9: as a US producer. So so topics like steel prices etc.
Speaker 9: They matter for us and we're not asking for subsidy
Speaker 9: or this important help. Nope, we just want to be
Speaker 9: fair and we want to be well, you know, we
Speaker 9: don't want to have our arm tied, but one arm
Speaker 9: time behind our back as we fight. We're ready to fight,
Speaker 9: but it needs to be fair and level, and that's
Speaker 9: of course, yes, right, it is a strong best interest
Speaker 9: which we have.
Speaker 1: Well, you're always fair with us, and always we appreciate
Speaker 1: your time. Mark Bitzer be well, so appreciate it. Sharing
Speaker 1: presidency of Whirlpool, Mark Bitzer joining us from Michigan shares
Speaker 1: of Warpool. They've been kicking around a little bit higher,
Speaker 1: a little bit lower in the Aftermark.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live
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Speaker 2: New York station, Just Say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty Mittel.
Speaker 1: You know their brands, I mean Barbie, Fisher, Price, Hot Wheels,
Speaker 1: American Girl, many more, I mean iconic toy brands. Well,
Speaker 1: they reported earnings this past week, the stock jumping after
Speaker 1: the toy maker reported second quarter just at earnings per
Speaker 1: share that came in ahead of estimates. Analyst two were
Speaker 1: positive on the results, highlighting the company's gross margin performance,
Speaker 1: which Morgan Stanley said had remained impressive.
Speaker 5: Back to talk about the toy business was enon Chris Mittel,
Speaker 5: chairman and CEO, who we caught up with right after
Speaker 5: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nettanyahu's address to a joint session
Speaker 5: of Congress at the US Capitol, And so we began
Speaker 5: by talking about the war between Israel and Amas and
Speaker 5: geopolitical tensions.
Speaker 10: Well, of course, this is an important part of our
Speaker 10: life these days, especially for me as an Israeli. I
Speaker 10: keep thinking about the hostages and pray for the release
Speaker 10: as soon as possible.
Speaker 1: All right, one more questions on politics, the US race,
Speaker 1: which you know has consumed our world, the November outcome.
Speaker 1: Does it matter for you as someone who runs a company,
Speaker 1: a well known, publicly iconic brand, global company, does it
Speaker 1: matter who's in the White House come November?
Speaker 3: For you?
Speaker 10: Of course, we are following everything very closely the election
Speaker 10: process leading up to the November elections. But as a company,
Speaker 10: we have a long standing history of working with all
Speaker 10: government leaders around the world, not just in the US,
Speaker 10: and we are focused on executing our strategy and confident
Speaker 10: that we can work with everyone across the political spectrum.
Speaker 5: How would your strategy in unchanged if we saw former
Speaker 5: President Trump return to the White House and continue to
Speaker 5: see perhaps an even harsher stance towards China increased tariffs
Speaker 5: for example, that he's talked about, how would that affect
Speaker 5: your business well?
Speaker 10: As a company, our job is to design a flexible
Speaker 10: organization that can respond and react to market changes. And
Speaker 10: I'm not commenting specifically about tariffs or China, but in general,
Speaker 10: this is what we do as a company. We have
Speaker 10: a very strong supply chain, a very versatile business model,
Speaker 10: and we are designed to be able to respond to
Speaker 10: changes in the market in supply chain or a consumer
Speaker 10: tastes for that matter. And this is something that we've
Speaker 10: done a really good job at over the last few
Speaker 10: years to create a flexible and responsive organization that can
Speaker 10: can adjust and operate in different types of environments.
Speaker 5: You know, and what is flexible and responsive mean in
Speaker 5: terms of geography, where is your supply chain right now,
Speaker 5: in terms of in China versus other parts of the world,
Speaker 5: like how much of your products that are sold around
Speaker 5: the world are made in China versus other countries.
Speaker 10: In China we make less than a half of our
Speaker 10: product today. Industry average is about eighty to eighty five percent,
Speaker 10: so we're indexed meaningfully less in the industry. And we
Speaker 10: continue to diversify manufacturing footprint. This is not necessarily in
Speaker 10: response to any political risk, but as a company, our
Speaker 10: job is to create that flexibility. So we continue to
Speaker 10: diversify our manufacturing footprint, our own factories and some of
Speaker 10: the vendors that we work with across a different geographist
Speaker 10: to make sure that we have the right capabilities and
Speaker 10: still the ability to mobilize resources and adjust to opportunities,
Speaker 10: as well as any changes in cost structure, in tariffs
Speaker 10: and capabilities that we are looking to continue to add
Speaker 10: to strengthen our offering.
Speaker 1: All right, so, as promised, let's get to the quarter.
Speaker 1: Let's get to the business. So talk to us about
Speaker 1: the quarter that was in the outlook, tell us about
Speaker 1: where you are feeling real strength where you're feeling some challenges.
Speaker 10: Well, this was a good second quarter and a good
Speaker 10: second half of first half of Mattel with significant growth,
Speaker 10: margin expansion, and improve profitability. We continue to strengthen our
Speaker 10: balance sheet and more than double free cash flow in
Speaker 10: the trailing twelve months. The industry performed better than anticipated,
Speaker 10: better than we anticipated, and Mattel gains shared globally in
Speaker 10: the second quarter and the first half.
Speaker 7: You talked about it before.
Speaker 10: Carol and tim ibelleve We spoke about how we continue
Speaker 10: to position the company for growth. We expect to grow
Speaker 10: in the second half of the year and reiterated a
Speaker 10: full yier guidance for the company.
Speaker 7: Looking ahead, we expect.
Speaker 10: To outpace the industry, continue to gain more share in
Speaker 10: twenty twenty four, and grow sales and earnings in twenty
Speaker 10: twenty five.
Speaker 1: So talk to us about some of the different brands.
Speaker 1: Fisher Price launching something I grew up with, Big Time
Speaker 1: launching its new line Fisher Price would recently. How is
Speaker 1: that being received by retailers and by consumers and do
Speaker 1: you anticipate that this could be maybe a really top
Speaker 1: seller come the holidays.
Speaker 10: Fisher Price is such an incredible brand. It will be
Speaker 10: celebrating its ninety fourth anniversary this year. Fisher Price grew
Speaker 10: eleven percent in the second quarter, reflecting the early success
Speaker 10: of our new strategy, which is working well. We expect
Speaker 10: Fisher Price to grow in in the second half to
Speaker 10: grow for the full year, driven by a new line
Speaker 10: of the woods segment that you mentioned that we're now
Speaker 10: expanding globally, more core lines product that are growing, and
Speaker 10: new franchises that we're adding to a little people collector.
Speaker 10: The brand is just so much part of culture and
Speaker 10: has great trust by parents and families. We in terms
Speaker 10: of performance in the category, outperformed the industry gain share
Speaker 10: in the infant toddler in preschool category in the second
Speaker 10: quarter and the first half and was the number one
Speaker 10: with Mattel was the number one toy company globally in
Speaker 10: the category.
Speaker 5: You know, and what about Hot Wheels growth and growth
Speaker 5: spellings for Hot Wheels was relatively weak in the second quarter.
Speaker 5: Give us an idea of the catalyst. Tell the investing
Speaker 5: audience about the catalyst for a rebound for the holiday
Speaker 5: selling season and if there are any new products or
Speaker 5: advertising come in to help push it.
Speaker 7: Hotwells is another incredible brand.
Speaker 10: Hot Wheels is on track for its seventh concent secutive
Speaker 10: record year. We couldn't be more excited and confident about
Speaker 10: where Hot Wheels is growing. It grew in the second
Speaker 10: in the second quarter five percent, with more activation planned
Speaker 10: for the second half. We're growing the adult collector line
Speaker 10: and more adult product. We brought any distribution globally for
Speaker 10: Hotwells specifically as well as the rest of the portfolio,
Speaker 10: and we expect to accelerate growth in the RC and
Speaker 10: skate lines, and of course have another season of Hot
Speaker 10: Wheels Let's Race on Netflix that is launching this fall.
Speaker 10: So great product activated by more content and just a
Speaker 10: great line by Hot Wheels on track for its seventh
Speaker 10: consecutive year of growth.
Speaker 1: All right, so Hot Wheels for guys and gals or kids,
Speaker 1: boys and girls, but also Barbie for boys and girls
Speaker 1: whoever wants it. But let's talk Barbie, which is another
Speaker 1: one of the iconic brands, you know, and I'm certainly
Speaker 1: of Mattel Barbie brand. I'm looking at the second quarter right,
Speaker 1: sales held back by a six percent decline in global
Speaker 1: billings for the company's flagship dolls segment, which includes Barbie,
Speaker 1: Toughier over your comparisons in the second half. What are
Speaker 1: you continuing to see in terms of the impact that
Speaker 1: that has had on the Barbie line, and do you
Speaker 1: expect the brand to return to growth maybe next year.
Speaker 10: Barbie is an incredible brand that never sits still, and
Speaker 10: the movie expanded the audience even more. As you would imagine,
Speaker 10: Barbie was the number one doll property globally and continued
Speaker 10: to gain share in the second quarter this year, we're
Speaker 10: celebrating Barbie's sixty fifth anniversary with multiple activations and a
Speaker 10: new brand campaign that we're launching in the fall. We're
Speaker 10: launching also new segments supported by more shelf space in
Speaker 10: the second half, so Barbie will have even more reach
Speaker 10: in the marketplace. We're launching new offering for adult collectors
Speaker 10: as well as we did for Hot Wheels, and there
Speaker 10: will be more content on Netflix targeting the kid's audience.
Speaker 10: Arby has consistently gained global share and continued to strengthen
Speaker 10: its position as the leader in the dolls category. And
Speaker 10: you know, Carol, yeah, very few brands have the cultural
Speaker 10: relevance as Barbie, and we couldn't be more confident about
Speaker 10: the incredible franchise. But this incredible franchise and where it
Speaker 10: will go from here.
Speaker 1: I am curious about American Girl where it still fits
Speaker 1: into your portfolio, because it's interesting, it has evolved, and
Speaker 1: we kind of went back to the beginning of the
Speaker 1: brand when it before it was even owned by you guys,
Speaker 1: about that it really taught young individuals, young women, young
Speaker 1: girls about history, and you know, they were very much
Speaker 1: tied to it. Now you've got a gap American Girl,
Speaker 1: You've got Disney collaborations. What's the thinking around American Girl.
Speaker 10: American Girl is a valued asset within the Mattel portfolio
Speaker 10: with significant fan base and great product. American Girl rule
Speaker 10: for the second quarter in a row, and we saw
Speaker 10: how America Girl is outpressing the industry in the large
Speaker 10: old category and the overall dull category, especially in the
Speaker 10: eighteen inch dolls and was up double digit. We saw
Speaker 10: the flapship flagship stores up, especially the new store in
Speaker 10: LA that was up high double digit. And we continue
Speaker 10: to optimize the Rettle footprint to make sure that we
Speaker 10: are creating a holistic omni channel experience for fans. And
Speaker 10: as you say, part of the success is how we
Speaker 10: evolve the brand and how we infuse brand purpose but
Speaker 10: also cultural relevance. And this is part of our secret
Speaker 10: source in the Mattel Playbook, and how we continue to
Speaker 10: stay relevant and take brands that are timeless and make
Speaker 10: them timely and reach and engage consumers today and touch
Speaker 10: fans everywhere, touch their heart and mind and do things
Speaker 10: that really matter in society and engage fans at an
Speaker 10: emotional level.
Speaker 1: I have to ask you, I know there's been a
Speaker 1: Wall Street Barbie. I don't know that there's been an
Speaker 1: American girl who works in investment banking. But having said that,
Speaker 1: a report on Monday that you guys have received a
Speaker 1: takeover approach from el Catterton, the private equity firm backed
Speaker 1: by LVMH. You've come out and said that you believe
Speaker 1: you the company can achieve a higher market value if
Speaker 1: it continues as an independent company. First of all, have
Speaker 1: they approached you and are you open to doing a deal?
Speaker 7: Well, as you would expect, we don't comment on the speculation.
Speaker 1: It's just now in it's just you and me.
Speaker 10: So just between us, just between the three of us.
Speaker 10: What I can say is that we're very confident in
Speaker 10: Motel strategy and our ability to create long term shareholder
Speaker 10: value as a stand alone company.
Speaker 7: This is what we're doing.
Speaker 10: You're seeing it in the quarter, you're seeing it at
Speaker 10: the start of this year, and you're seeing it since
Speaker 10: the start of the ten around in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 7: It's in the numbers.
Speaker 10: It's in our growth in top line by a billion dollars.
Speaker 10: It's how we continue to our adjusted growth margin by
Speaker 10: almost one thousand basis points and guide it to a
Speaker 10: higher number another one hundred to one hundred and fifty points.
Speaker 10: This year, adjusted IBIDA grew seven and a half times
Speaker 10: since we started the turn around, and our free cash
Speaker 10: flow went from a negative three hundred and twenty five
Speaker 10: million dollars to more than seven hundred million dollars at
Speaker 10: the end of last year. And of course we are
Speaker 10: now investment grade. It's about creating long term shareholder value
Speaker 10: and we are well positioned to build on our multi
Speaker 10: year trajectory and continue to execute our strategy and expect
Speaker 10: the share price to reflect this over time.
Speaker 5: What would make you do a deal.
Speaker 10: Well, broadly speaking, we are here to create long term
Speaker 10: shareholder value and we do it in every day. This
Speaker 10: is what we focused on and we consistently execute and
Speaker 10: deliver on the strategy. That's what we focused on and
Speaker 10: we believe that we create that value long term sho
Speaker 10: holder value as a standalone company.
Speaker 1: So to that point, Lina Dunham, stepping away from the
Speaker 1: poly Pocket movie, what are your plans for that brand
Speaker 1: and tell us what's the next you know, big screen
Speaker 1: and you know, I think you guys have a ton
Speaker 1: of projects in the works. What can we look forward to.
Speaker 10: As we're very excited by the progress we're seeing in
Speaker 10: our film strategy Mattel Films. Of course, the Barbe movie
Speaker 10: is set the scene, but there's so much more and
Speaker 10: we currently have sixteen projects in the making. We recently
Speaker 10: announced a lot a release date for Masters of the
Speaker 10: Universes would be June fifth of twenty twenty six. We
Speaker 10: announced a new director for Matchbox and a new movie
Speaker 10: for Months to High at Universal with a Kiva Goldsman,
Speaker 10: a two time Oscar winning writer and producer. So there's
Speaker 10: a lot that is going on with everything at Mattel Films.
Speaker 10: The Polly Pocket project is progressing. Lily Collins is still
Speaker 10: attached and we're very excited about how this movie is
Speaker 10: shaping up, as well as the rest of the film
Speaker 10: slate that again is all about It's all about collaborating
Speaker 10: with leading filmmakers to make standout quality movies based on
Speaker 10: our iconic brands that will resonate in culture and appeal
Speaker 10: to global audiences.
Speaker 1: You know, and Ken wants to know, does he get
Speaker 1: a movie? Does he get a movie?
Speaker 10: Of course, we continue to look for opportunities to engage
Speaker 10: bands every way we can.
Speaker 7: And one day maybe you will have a movie as well.
Speaker 1: I'm open, I'm going to count on you.
Speaker 5: Maybe you can help you with the hot wheels on
Speaker 5: your desk. But you gave it to you, gave it to.
Speaker 1: Myself, little cameos in movies, courtesy and Bloomberg programming. You know,
Speaker 1: thank you as well. A lot on your plate, so
Speaker 1: appreciate all the time. You always give us a fine
Speaker 1: for us. Great to check in with you you on cries.
Speaker 1: Of course, folks, he is the CEO and chairman of Mittel.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 2: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on
Speaker 2: Apple car Play and then Brout Auto with a Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Business app or watched us live on YouTube.
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty four Summer Olympic Games officially kicked off
Speaker 1: this week in Paris, France. Earlier in the week, the
Speaker 1: International Olympic Committee announced that Salt Lake City, Utah, will
Speaker 1: host the twenty thirty four Winter Olympics. As for the
Speaker 1: next Summer Games, they will be in Los Angeles.
Speaker 4: Here's the kicker.
Speaker 5: Two of the events will not take place in Los Angeles,
Speaker 5: but rather thirteen hundred miles east in Oklahoma City. The
Speaker 5: partnership between the two cities was designed to use Oklahoma
Speaker 5: City's existing sports facilities to keep costs down.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting, So for more on how this partnership
Speaker 1: came to be and to get his take on the
Speaker 1: overall political environment affecting his city, because you know there's
Speaker 1: a lot going on in US politics. You know that
Speaker 1: we were joined by the mayor of Oklahoma City, David Holt,
Speaker 1: who joined us not from Oklahoma City, but stay with
Speaker 1: me from vacation on the Jersey shoe.
Speaker 5: If you're mayor, you're always working, right, it gets you
Speaker 5: go everywhere.
Speaker 1: Talked with him on the heels of the Republican National Convention,
Speaker 1: just to give you an idea in terms of timing.
Speaker 1: Stay with us. It will all make sense in a moment.
Speaker 5: I am on vacation.
Speaker 3: I'm in like the jankiest studio environment ever. But you
Speaker 3: know the city, Our city never rests, nor should the mayor.
Speaker 3: So I had to take this opportunity to talk to
Speaker 3: you guys today.
Speaker 1: And as someone who was born and bred in New
Speaker 1: Jersey still lives in New Jersey, thank you very much
Speaker 1: for being in an.
Speaker 5: Art hero would be at the Jersey Shore right now.
Speaker 5: She didn't have to be here with us right now.
Speaker 5: We're going to get married a.
Speaker 1: Philly girl, So I ended up here, makes sense, makes sense.
Speaker 5: We're going to get to your city being chosen as
Speaker 5: a venue for the twenty twenty eight Los Angeles Olympics.
Speaker 5: But first we're going to start with politics, because you
Speaker 5: are a Republican and you were an aid early in
Speaker 5: your career to Speaker of the House Stennet Hastard. You
Speaker 5: helped re elect George W. Bush in your home state.
Speaker 5: You were in the Oklahoma Senate. Yet you're not at
Speaker 5: the R and C right now. You're on vacation. Why, Oh, well,
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I guess I haven't been in a while. I there
Speaker 3: was a time of my life when I was a
Speaker 3: delegate to the RNC, and I've been very involved, and
Speaker 3: I served in the White House for President George W.
Speaker 3: Bush for two years in legislative affairs, but I have
Speaker 3: not been a supporter of Trump is im personally. And
Speaker 3: what I love, though, is that I serve in an
Speaker 3: office as the mayor of Oklahoma City where technically I'm
Speaker 3: non partisan. I mean, I recognize when I go on
Speaker 3: you know, national appearances like this, that's hard to process
Speaker 3: and everybody's got to say how I'm registered, and that's fine.
Speaker 3: But you know, all mayors, Republicans, Democrats or independents, we
Speaker 3: really have found that we've just got to bring people together.
Speaker 3: We really can't be partisan. We will work with whoever.
Speaker 3: And in our cities, you know, no matter where you're mayor,
Speaker 3: you're going to have a lot of people who come
Speaker 3: from all those different perspectives and nothing's going to get
Speaker 3: done if you don't find a way to unite people.
Speaker 3: My key focus is serving the people of Oklahoma City,
Speaker 3: and the people of Oklahoma City largely are very purple politically,
Speaker 3: and that's how we get things done. We find ways
Speaker 3: to set aside those things and divide it some fine
Speaker 3: common purpose.
Speaker 5: It's interesting that you say that because we speak with
Speaker 5: Mattie Parker mayor Mattie Parker, the mayor for Worth, quite regularly,
Speaker 5: and she sort of gives a similar answer that she
Speaker 5: has an R by her name, but doesn't necessarily believe
Speaker 5: in the sense of what the National Party is doing.
Speaker 5: And I'm wondering if that makes your job as mayor
Speaker 5: more difficult, or if it's certainly or if it actually
Speaker 5: just doesn't matter, because what you say is you're a
Speaker 5: nonpartisan mayor, but like you said, your pedigree is in
Speaker 5: Republican politics.
Speaker 3: Well, I think you know. I've been mayor for six years.
Speaker 3: Mattie's been in office for several years as well. I mean, ultimately,
Speaker 3: you build trust with your voters, regardless of their registration,
Speaker 3: and I think I've long since passed that threshold with
Speaker 3: people in my city who are not registered Republicans. I
Speaker 3: think Democrats and independence know that they get a very
Speaker 3: pragmatic approach and a very open.
Speaker 5: Door from me.
Speaker 3: So I maybe initially maybe they would have been suspicious that,
Speaker 3: you know, that I was going to be farther to
Speaker 3: the right than they would have liked, but I think
Speaker 3: they have found that again, my sole purpose really is
Speaker 3: to find that that outcome that I think is attainable
Speaker 3: at every level of government, that outcome that represents about
Speaker 3: seventy percent of people in the middle, regardless of their
Speaker 3: party registration. That's essentially what American democracy produced for two
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty years. And it's really only in recent
Speaker 3: times that we've really struggled with that. But I think
Speaker 3: mayors are still practicing this art the way it was
Speaker 3: practiced for two centuries in this country, and we're often
Speaker 3: elected in a way. Maddie and I are both elected
Speaker 3: in a non partisan way that allows us to build
Speaker 3: that coalition. So yeah, I think I've transcended party politics
Speaker 3: in Oklahoma City, and I'm glad to have done so.
Speaker 3: To me, that's how American politics is supposed to work.
Speaker 1: But I do wonder, as a mayor, does it matter
Speaker 1: to you, not personally, but in terms of what you
Speaker 1: ken or can't do ultimately who is in the White
Speaker 1: House come November.
Speaker 3: Sure, I mean largely in Oklahoma City and probably in
Speaker 3: thost cities. You know, we've learned how to be somewhat
Speaker 3: self reliant, but if we can get assistance from the
Speaker 3: Fed government, we like that and we prefer that, you know,
Speaker 3: and we've had some great examples over the last few years.
Speaker 3: We got funding direct funding through the Cares Act, which
Speaker 3: was actually under President Trump, and then we got direct
Speaker 3: funding through ARPA, which was obviously under President Biden, and
Speaker 3: then the Bipartisan Infrastructure Laws is a huge, you know,
Speaker 3: benefit to cities. We've already gotten over one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 3: Other cities have gotten a lot more, and we certainly
Speaker 3: have hopes and expectations of getting a lot more as
Speaker 3: the years advanced. So, you know, the last few years
Speaker 3: have been very beneficial for cities. Again, like if they aren't,
Speaker 3: then we figure out a way to get it done. Anyways,
Speaker 3: but obviously, when we have an administration in the White
Speaker 3: House that sort of pro city understands that, you know,
Speaker 3: American cities are the chief economic and cultural engines of
Speaker 3: the country.
Speaker 5: That does make our life a little easier.
Speaker 3: And we communicate and work together as a nation of
Speaker 3: mayors to the US Conference of Mayors for that reason.
Speaker 3: I mean, we do care what happens in Washington, and
Speaker 3: we like to speak with one voice. I'm actually the
Speaker 3: current vice president of that organization. I'll be the president
Speaker 3: in eleven months, and that's an important opportunity for us
Speaker 3: to speak with one voice in Washington, and we do
Speaker 3: it often.
Speaker 1: Mayor Hold talk to us little bit about what you
Speaker 1: guys are doing for the Olympics, because at first, when,
Speaker 1: to be quite honest, when our producer was laying it
Speaker 1: out for us this morning.
Speaker 5: Hender I saw the tellidrad I was like, what this
Speaker 5: makes no sense to me because the Olympics or in La.
Speaker 1: Right, and so what are you doing? Tell us about
Speaker 1: what you guys are doing.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I may just at a macro level kind
Speaker 3: of explained that for thirty years in Oklahoma City, we've
Speaker 3: been making I would say, kind of historic investments in
Speaker 3: our city. I mean it is definitely if you're in
Speaker 3: urban circles you kind of know the Oklahoma City story.
Speaker 3: We've been passing by huge margins, these major initiatives after
Speaker 3: major initiatives, and as a result, it trickles down to
Speaker 3: the two venues I'm going to talk about here in
Speaker 3: a moment. You know, we basically invested in two particular
Speaker 3: sports and ended up kind of being at the right
Speaker 3: place at the right time. We have the world's greatest
Speaker 3: softball stadium that is like, really beyond argument. The second
Speaker 3: largest softball stadium in the world is half the size
Speaker 3: of ours. Like we just doubled down on softball. We
Speaker 3: are now the home of the women's College World Series
Speaker 3: every year, and this is a major capital for if
Speaker 3: not the world capital for softball is right in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3: The other thing that happened to be fortuitous was we
Speaker 3: made a huge, huge investment in whitewater. We have really
Speaker 3: the only whitewater course west of the Mississippi. And this
Speaker 3: started by putting dams on our river just because thirty
Speaker 3: years ago, just because we were sick of mowing it.
Speaker 3: We wanted some water in our river, our river. We
Speaker 3: wanted a better, aesthetically pleasing body of water. And you know,
Speaker 3: one thing grew from the next, and eventually we had
Speaker 3: this rowing community. Eventually we decided to invest in it
Speaker 3: through Whitewater to kind of have all of the paddel
Speaker 3: sports there on our river, and lo and behold, obviously,
Speaker 3: La gets the twenty twenty eight Olympics. I became really
Speaker 3: good friends with Mary Garcetti back when I got elected
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen, and late in that year he first
Speaker 3: broached the topics. So it's actually been a six year journey.
Speaker 3: He first broached the topic of hosting Whitewater in Oklahoma City,
Speaker 3: which obviously, so, I mean, I think I'm like most
Speaker 3: you know, people in America and around the world. I mean,
Speaker 3: I consider the Olympics like the brand beyond all beyond
Speaker 3: all other brands. I mean, it transcends sports. So the
Speaker 3: idea of getting that in Oklahoma City was beyond our
Speaker 3: wildest imagination. And six years later now the conversation includes
Speaker 3: softball as well, and LA twenty eight announced a few
Speaker 3: weeks ago that it is their plan to host all
Speaker 3: of the Whitewater sports. It's actually at least six different
Speaker 3: gold medals in all of the softball tournament in Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3: That's nearly two weeks of events. We'd have three hundred athletes,
Speaker 3: two hundred thousand tickets, and you know, an opportunity for
Speaker 3: tens of millions of people in that part of the
Speaker 3: country to have a direct engagement with the LA Olympics.
Speaker 5: So obviously we're very excited.
Speaker 3: I do want to say there's still some process still remaining,
Speaker 3: and the LA City Council has to consider certain aspects
Speaker 3: of this proposal from LA twenty eight and We want
Speaker 3: to be deeply respectful of that. But just to get
Speaker 3: to this point even where we're even having this conversation
Speaker 3: is obviously a big deal from Oklahoma City, and I
Speaker 3: think kind of reflects a renaissance that's been happening. Maybe
Speaker 3: belong with some people's radar, but definitely is positioning us
Speaker 3: as you know, a top tier American city, something I
Speaker 3: certainly couldn't have said thirty years ago.
Speaker 5: But this overnight.
Speaker 3: Success has required thirty years of investment in venues like
Speaker 3: these that we're going to enjoy and put forward into
Speaker 3: twenty eight LA.
Speaker 1: It is pretty cool how it comes out, Although I
Speaker 1: have to say I was just checking. I'm like, it's
Speaker 1: ony three hundred and twenty seven miles between LA and
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City. It's a twenty hour car trip. I mean,
Speaker 1: so are I guess you guys are going to be
Speaker 1: putting up athletes obviously fans like, there's a lot and
Speaker 1: I know you can probably only talk about so much,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of logistics to all of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you know, we're been in this conversation
Speaker 3: for a while and we're fully committed to providing, you know,
Speaker 3: the kind of energy and experience that the fans and
Speaker 3: the athletes expect, and it does appear, you know that
Speaker 3: LA twenty eight is absolutely committed that the athletes will
Speaker 3: still be able to participate in the opening ceremonies, the
Speaker 3: closing ceremonies, possibly both. But in the meantime, yeah, we're gonna,
Speaker 3: I think, treat them so well that they'll be ultimately
Speaker 3: be grateful that they got that opportunity. But we'll obviously
Speaker 3: probably have to prove ourselves in that regards, but we
Speaker 3: feel really confident that we're going to be able to
Speaker 3: provide that dynamic environment. And I think, you know, the
Speaker 3: big picture here from sort of an Olympic movement perspective,
Speaker 3: is that you know, the IOC wants to see cities
Speaker 3: not keep investing in venues that don't have a long
Speaker 3: term operating plan, right, And so these two venues don't
Speaker 3: exist in California, they arguably don't exist anywhere west of
Speaker 3: the Mississippi, right. So you know, I think that you'll
Speaker 3: see maybe more of this in the future. It is
Speaker 3: a little without precedent right now, with some occasional exceptions.
Speaker 3: I mean, people have you know, observed that Paris is
Speaker 3: holding surfing in Tahiti or whatever.
Speaker 7: I mean.
Speaker 3: So there's always certain things maybe that move.
Speaker 5: A little bit farther.
Speaker 3: But I think moving forward beyond LA, I think you're
Speaker 3: going to see more of this because we did go
Speaker 3: through that period for those who followed the Olympic movement,
Speaker 3: where you know, cities were building these mega stadiums that
Speaker 3: they just didn't have a use for beyond the Olympics.
Speaker 3: So I think we're helping LA present and more sustainable games,
Speaker 3: which pleases the IOC and the Olympic movement. And we're
Speaker 3: just so grateful to have that opportunity to support LA
Speaker 3: and to support these Olympics, these LA Olympics, and this
Speaker 3: partnership obviously I hope will be mutually beneficial.
Speaker 5: A mayor, I hope beyond the Olympics, I want to
Speaker 5: speak a little bit about the local economy in Oklahoma
Speaker 5: City because the city is certainly known for quite a
Speaker 5: bit energy, agriculture, aviation, aerospace, logistics. What would you say
Speaker 5: is the area of the sector where you see the
Speaker 5: most growth opportunity?
Speaker 3: Well, probably just for share volume and aviation and aerospace.
Speaker 3: You know, we have a big air force base, Tinker
Speaker 3: Air Force Base in our city limits you know, thirty
Speaker 3: thousand people at least drive in there every day, and
Speaker 3: that has had a lot of spin off activity, which
Speaker 3: we've obviously been very grateful for on many levels. You know,
Speaker 3: when I talked about these investments that we started making
Speaker 3: in our city thirty years ago, part of that was
Speaker 3: a response to the economic depression that we experienced in
Speaker 3: the eighties, which was largely due to an over reliance
Speaker 3: on just one industry, oil and gas. So ever since,
Speaker 3: it's like our you know, vision for city leadership has
Speaker 3: just been anything we can do to diversify you name,
Speaker 3: you know, the economic purpose, and we'll be there right
Speaker 3: because we've just got to find other things besides oil
Speaker 3: and gas. So aviation has been the biggest. But I mean,
Speaker 3: we got all kinds of stuff going on. I was
Speaker 3: part of hosting a premiere of Twisters Monday night. We
Speaker 3: have this new one, so this growing film industry in
Speaker 3: Oklahoma City. I mean, there's lots of cool stuff happening
Speaker 3: in many differents.
Speaker 1: Exective mayholds. We'd be remiss not to ask you. We've
Speaker 1: got about twenty five seconds left here, any signed of
Speaker 1: that noomic slow down or recession just quickly a little bit.
Speaker 3: Our sales tax growth, and that's a big leading indicator
Speaker 3: for US is slowing down. It is not like down
Speaker 3: year to year, but the growth is less than it
Speaker 3: was in the past. So we're being a little cautious
Speaker 3: for sure, especially from a city budgeting perspective.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we count on you guys to get
Speaker 1: some idea of really what's happening on the ground among
Speaker 1: the nation cities. David Holt, enjoy your time on the
Speaker 1: Jersey Shore, Mayor of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live
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Speaker 1: music venue home to Bruce Spring that has become an
Speaker 1: international pilgrimage site for rock fans and musicians alike. New
Speaker 1: York Times political correspondent Nick Korsanidi on his book I
Speaker 1: Don't Want to Go Home, The oral history of the Stone.
Speaker 5: Pony, plus our Pursuits team asks is health Span more
Speaker 5: than just a money grab? We're talking about a host
Speaker 5: of startups that promised to slow the aging process.
Speaker 1: First up this hour, As you know, we had a
Speaker 1: lot thrown at us this past week thanks to a
Speaker 1: deluge of earnings, the aftermath of President Biden dropping out
Speaker 1: of the race for president and Vice President Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: stepping into the spotlight and very likely heading the Democratic ticket.
Speaker 1: We still also have two wars Russia, Ukraine and Israel
Speaker 1: Hamas and you know, there's just so much coming at
Speaker 1: us to.
Speaker 4: Him right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there really is. I mean, the problems, the stress
Speaker 5: is the innovation, the backdrop and the politics of it all.
Speaker 5: It's the bread and butter of our next guest, David
Speaker 5: Bach is President Elective IMD. It's a global executive education platform.
Speaker 5: It's also a business school. His recent columns cover everything
Speaker 5: from future proofing business for any presidential outcome, too when
Speaker 5: CEOs should actually take a stand.
Speaker 11: So i'md as a top business school, as you said,
Speaker 11: but we're really distinct from other peer schools, and that's
Speaker 11: so much of what we do is focused on executive education.
Speaker 1: So it's why of the salary part my get a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 11: We love our degree programs, they're our soul, they're terrific.
Speaker 11: But you know, really what we're best known for is
Speaker 11: to work with companies, to work with leaders on their challenges.
Speaker 11: And as you said, there are many of them right now.
Speaker 5: And those are non degree programs.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 11: So about eighty percent or so of what we do
Speaker 11: is either solutions for organizations, custom programs, or we run
Speaker 11: a lot of open programs in Lasan on our campus
Speaker 11: there in Singapore where we have another campus, and then
Speaker 11: of course more and more.
Speaker 5: Virtually, what do you find that the executives want to
Speaker 5: get out of their class? Well, it's not you can't
Speaker 5: really say classes. I mean you could call them churses,
Speaker 5: but since it's not a degree program, yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: how long are they coming for and what are their
Speaker 5: goals in getting out there?
Speaker 11: Look, I mean we run programs as short as two
Speaker 11: or three days, some of them are as long as
Speaker 11: six weeks.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 11: Sometimes with companies we do multiple modules over eight nine months.
Speaker 11: One big trend that we've certainly seen is that companies
Speaker 11: have moved away from just doing this as a sort
Speaker 11: of nice to have, you know, every year they send
Speaker 11: a couple of people, but they really start working with
Speaker 11: us when they're facing major challenges. Right, the business is
Speaker 11: slowing down, they're thinking about what's next in terms of
Speaker 11: innovation and how to deal with the volatile world that
Speaker 11: we're in. So we're working with them and developing the
Speaker 11: next generation of leaders and tackling the key challenges in
Speaker 11: front of them.
Speaker 1: Many would say it's best to get the training before
Speaker 1: the stress points and challenges hit you. So, having said that,
Speaker 1: how do you think about what you know? There's a
Speaker 1: lot that comes at executive Do you think about the
Speaker 1: crises that we've had over the last couple of decades,
Speaker 1: whether it's the Great Financial Crisis, whether it was the
Speaker 1: tech fallout before that, whether it was the global pandemic
Speaker 1: there's nine to eleven, there's a lot of things that
Speaker 1: are certainly hitting our world. So what's top of mind though,
Speaker 1: in terms of what you think a leader needs today?
Speaker 11: Yeah, so I think the emphasis actually is really on
Speaker 11: leaders ship, on leadership development. Right, how do you develop
Speaker 11: the self awareness that you can be authentic in a
Speaker 11: situation like this? How are you agile? How are you resilient,
Speaker 11: so you can deal with whatever is thrown at you
Speaker 11: and provide guidance.
Speaker 1: I want to go share because only you know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting going through the pandemic, going through George Floyd, you
Speaker 1: did see a lot of executives at prominent publicly held
Speaker 1: companies come out and really make some strong statements and
Speaker 1: take some strong positions. I think it's safe to say
Speaker 1: that it feels like that has calmed down a lot.
Speaker 1: And now we're kind of hearing that if you're a
Speaker 1: public you know, you've got a publicly held company.
Speaker 5: Like I keep saying, I think it's not only it's
Speaker 5: fair to say that, I think it's fair to say
Speaker 5: that the pendulum has swung the other way and that
Speaker 5: DEI has actually looked at as a you know, sort
Speaker 5: of dirty word at this point, and it's pejorative. I mean,
Speaker 5: companies don't want to touch this stuff anymore.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yes, and no, I mean I think even in
Speaker 11: the US, in the US, but even in the US,
Speaker 11: look after the Supreme Court, you know, put an end
Speaker 11: to affirmative action and college applications, companies and their leaders
Speaker 11: still care out and so that we remain committed to
Speaker 11: diversity and inclusion, perhaps not necessarily emphasizing their formal DEI
Speaker 11: programs as much, but you still have a young generation
Speaker 11: that you're trying to attract your organization that wants to
Speaker 11: make sure that they work at a place where they belong.
Speaker 5: Tractor Supply came out with a statement that talked about
Speaker 5: they're not submitting data to human rights campaign. They're eliminating
Speaker 5: DEI roles and retiring the current DEI goes adult goals
Speaker 5: while still ensuring a respectful environment. They're withdrawing carbon emissions
Speaker 5: goals and focusing on land and water conservation efforts. That's
Speaker 5: a pendulum swinging the other way.
Speaker 11: I think, yeah, or you can call it the two
Speaker 11: steps forward, one step backwards. That tends to happen a
Speaker 11: lot when you're dealing with societal change. There's no question
Speaker 11: that the environment in the US, particularly around ESG, has changed.
Speaker 11: But you know, certainly when you look at Europe, a
Speaker 11: lot of companies remain very much focused on sustainability goals.
Speaker 11: I think they remain focused on promoting equity, and I
Speaker 11: think a lot more companies do it quietly rather than
Speaker 11: doing these flashy reports.
Speaker 1: Is there a real distinction between European companies though, and
Speaker 1: US companies on that, I.
Speaker 11: Think European companies have moved a little bit later, and
Speaker 11: clearly the challenges and the issues are very different from
Speaker 11: the ones here in the US. But you know, we're
Speaker 11: seeing a lot of European europe based companies that are
Speaker 11: operating globally wrestling with some of the same issues.
Speaker 5: European companies from an equity return perspective have just been
Speaker 5: completely left behind by US companies. Yeah, why is that?
Speaker 5: And what do you hear from European leaders as to
Speaker 5: why European company leaders?
Speaker 11: A really really important debate right now in Europe is
Speaker 11: about global competitive notes, right, I mean, where does Europe
Speaker 11: fall in a world that sees the US and Asia,
Speaker 11: if you will, being the motors of growth. And you know,
Speaker 11: there's been a lot of emphasis on what do policy
Speaker 11: makers need to do complete the single European market for capital,
Speaker 11: remove barriers, have smart regulation. So there's a lot there
Speaker 11: that needs to happen. I think European CEOs feel generally
Speaker 11: sort of pretty optimistic about the opportunities in front of them,
Speaker 11: but they're looking for policy makers to lend more of
Speaker 11: a hand and not put roadblocks in front.
Speaker 1: Of them the election outcome here in the United States.
Speaker 1: What's the advice how do you kind of prepare the
Speaker 1: current c suite and leaders today for the outcome.
Speaker 11: So we had a session and at our school at
Speaker 11: IMD a while back where we're actually just about a
Speaker 11: month ago, and of course, you know, it was like
Speaker 11: Biden or Trump, how do your future prove your business?
Speaker 11: And now it's not Biden, We'll see if it's Trump.
Speaker 11: But and you know, it was fascinating because so many
Speaker 11: business leaders around the world is so dialed into what
Speaker 11: is happening in the US. They're following everything because the
Speaker 11: implications are going to be so vast. And so one
Speaker 11: thing that was really interesting was actually we gave them
Speaker 11: sort of policy positions on cards. Half of them were
Speaker 11: Trump positions, the other half of Biden positions, but we
Speaker 11: didn't indicate which ones were Trump with Biden. And the
Speaker 11: first thing that was fascinating was we asked them to pick,
Speaker 11: you know, on each issue, on a range of issues,
Speaker 11: the one that was best for the business. Nobody had
Speaker 11: a straight Trump or a straight Biden.
Speaker 1: I'd love that.
Speaker 7: Interesting.
Speaker 1: We also said, what does that tell you?
Speaker 11: Well, what it tells you is that the business that you're.
Speaker 7: Just what no, But I think what it tells.
Speaker 11: You, well, we actually we also mixed in some some
Speaker 11: positions that we made up and those were quite popular
Speaker 11: on top of it. So I think what it tells
Speaker 11: you is nobody is going to get the kind of
Speaker 11: policies across the board that they're looking for, at least
Speaker 11: in terms of the global scene. What were the policies
Speaker 11: that generate know, we had issues around what are you
Speaker 11: doing around sustainability and supporting electrification? There are questions around trade.
Speaker 11: There are questions about tech regulation for example, right competition policy,
Speaker 11: anti trust policy, and nobody was thrilled with what they
Speaker 11: got from either politician.
Speaker 5: Is there a takeaway for what the next administration needs
Speaker 5: to do for business globally?
Speaker 11: First of all, I think the takeaway is that as
Speaker 11: a business leader, you just have to think about how
Speaker 11: do we make or how do we insulate our business
Speaker 11: somewhat right? What are some of the things that we
Speaker 11: should be No matter what, what are the big trends.
Speaker 11: Policy in the US is going to be somewhat volatile.
Speaker 11: There's also going to the question of you know, what
Speaker 11: can you get through Congress? What actually survives the courts,
Speaker 11: and so at the end of the day, you should
Speaker 11: probably worry a little bit less about this minutia that
Speaker 11: part of a proposal and just think more broadly, what
Speaker 11: is the direction of travel and how do we set
Speaker 11: ourselves up.
Speaker 5: That's a really interesting exercise.
Speaker 1: It is pretty cool. Yeah, I love you kind of
Speaker 1: sliding stuff in.
Speaker 5: And sometimes, right.
Speaker 11: I mean, we actually had in there, you know, well,
Speaker 11: you know, we had in there a very sort of
Speaker 11: radical proposal in phasing out fossil fuels, and a lot
Speaker 11: of the business leaders in the in the program actually
Speaker 11: chose that one because they actually said, this would give
Speaker 11: us a certainty and we can plan around it. Of
Speaker 11: course that's not really on offer from either party.
Speaker 1: That's pretty powerful. Well, you have to do on some
Speaker 1: of those things. Has everybody to buy in, right, so
Speaker 1: that the playing field is level, David, How much does
Speaker 1: curriculum change for you guys from year to year?
Speaker 11: So we never teach the same thing twice, It does
Speaker 11: change quite a bit. We're emphasizing a lot, of course
Speaker 11: right now, the impact that AI is going to have
Speaker 11: on the business. We're thinking about AI both as a
Speaker 11: pedagogical tool, So how do we use it to personalize learning,
Speaker 11: But of course also what does it mean for business?
Speaker 11: What does it mean for service delivery? Where do you
Speaker 11: go in terms of innovation? So there's always some change.
Speaker 11: I think that's the most recent area where we're reworking it.
Speaker 11: But of course, you know, a couple of things remain there.
Speaker 11: There's some foundational skills sort of adapt only in terms
Speaker 11: of the way we deliver them.
Speaker 5: I'm wondering how much of your time is spent in
Speaker 5: the classroom, or when you become president, how much many
Speaker 5: time in the classroom versus out there raising money for
Speaker 5: the school. You know, in the US you went to Berkeley,
Speaker 5: and yes, so you understand how chicks work here in
Speaker 5: the US. The deans spend so much time in raising money.
Speaker 5: Are you going to have to do that?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 11: So I expect that I'll be spending the majority of
Speaker 11: my time externally oriented.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 11: That includes meeting with folks like you and saying sharing
Speaker 11: a little bit about what we do, but of course
Speaker 11: also meeting with our clients, meeting with alums, meeting with donors.
Speaker 11: I think for us, the client piece is probably a
Speaker 11: little bit more important.
Speaker 5: Client the US school, the term client is not when
Speaker 5: you'd hear.
Speaker 11: No, you don't hear it from traditional businesses. Yeah, so
Speaker 11: we work with you know, we we are an academic institution,
Speaker 11: but we have borrowed, you know, with pride from professional
Speaker 11: service firms and how they work with their clients to
Speaker 11: solve their problem.
Speaker 7: So I'll do a lot of that.
Speaker 5: I still will teach a little, So.
Speaker 11: I'll probably do about you know, fifteen twenty sessions a year.
Speaker 11: A session for us is sort of three four hours,
Speaker 11: so it's not you know, it's not a huge amount
Speaker 11: compared to my colleagues, but it is important to remain
Speaker 11: in touch.
Speaker 5: Do you see yourself remaining in that position for a
Speaker 5: while and then going back to teaching. Is that how
Speaker 5: it works?
Speaker 11: Yeah, that's usually how it works, right. It's sort of
Speaker 11: a temporary assignment. It's a five year term. You know,
Speaker 11: you might do one or two, depending on how things go,
Speaker 11: what my colleagues think of my leadership and the board,
Speaker 11: and then yeah, you usually transition back into a faculty role.
Speaker 1: How competitive is this landscape? And you know, I go
Speaker 1: back to my undergrad did it in here as part
Speaker 1: of the Columbia University program and they had a big
Speaker 1: executive education program and the execs would go up I think,
Speaker 1: like on Fridays and it was a big deal, big deal.
Speaker 1: How competitive is this space still.
Speaker 11: It's super competitive, and really what clients I'm looking for
Speaker 11: is clearly the return on investment.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 11: So one part is of course the cost right of
Speaker 11: doing a program like this, but for a company in particular,
Speaker 11: like having thirty or forty people's be away from the
Speaker 11: office for a week, right, is an enormous investment, and
Speaker 11: so we awe it to them to make sure we
Speaker 11: deliver the kind of impact on their business. And so
Speaker 11: we've been working very hard over the last couple of
Speaker 11: years to come up with metrics from measuring the impact.
Speaker 11: The return on learning is really really good for companies,
Speaker 11: but we have to demonstrate that and we compete with others.
Speaker 1: Is that the typical program that the people who the
Speaker 1: clients are the students, that it's a week that they're away.
Speaker 11: And that yeah, I mean, that's what we have been
Speaker 11: trying to do. So it used to be longer than that.
Speaker 11: The time has gotten shorter. We're using technology to drive
Speaker 11: more impact. So very often before we meet on campus
Speaker 11: for a week, we might have connected virtually before we've
Speaker 11: done some assessments, right, there might be some project works
Speaker 11: and coaching after the program, so we extend the learning
Speaker 11: journey beyond the week so we have more impact. But yeah,
Speaker 11: week out of the office is quite typical.
Speaker 1: Is there like a certain executive or company that often
Speaker 1: comes up in conversations.
Speaker 11: As a competitor, as a client.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as like as the students are in there, Oh, okay,
Speaker 1: can study or something like that's curious.
Speaker 11: Yeah, people want to know, people do want to hear
Speaker 11: from whoever is sort of new and so you know,
Speaker 11: of course you talk a lot right now about open
Speaker 11: eye if you're thinking about governance and what happens around technology,
Speaker 11: and of course some of the companies you guys feature
Speaker 11: a lot. You know, a Tesla is going to come
Speaker 11: up or you know, a BYD and what we can
Speaker 11: learn from them in terms of their innovation. I've been
Speaker 11: doing some teaching around TSMC and how do we think
Speaker 11: about geopolitics through through that lens. But then also part
Speaker 11: of our job is to put companies in front of
Speaker 11: executives that they wouldn't have been exposed to from a
Speaker 11: different sector, a different part of the world, that do
Speaker 11: something interesting that they can be they can be challenged
Speaker 11: and inspired by well.
Speaker 1: Having said that, is there a company that you think
Speaker 1: about for the Bloomberg audience that they should be looking at,
Speaker 1: or a leader that they should be looking at that
Speaker 1: maybe isn't one that Tim and I talk about a lot.
Speaker 11: You know, there's there's so many companies doing really really
Speaker 11: interesting things. But I'll tell you one that I use
Speaker 11: in many of my programs. It's a company called Zipline.
Speaker 5: I don't know if YAH follow it. I'm the drune
Speaker 5: company delivery stuff in Rwanda.
Speaker 11: Look exactly. I find them fascinating because you know, I
Speaker 11: work at the nexus of business and politics, right and
Speaker 11: so regulation in the US and Europe would have made
Speaker 11: a business like this impossible.
Speaker 7: So what do they do?
Speaker 11: They pivot, They go to Africa, they save lives, and
Speaker 11: before you know it, they put together a coalition of
Speaker 11: stakeholders that open doors for them. And they've moved much
Speaker 11: faster because there were agiley, they were purpose focused. And
Speaker 11: so I use them as an example relatively regularly in
Speaker 11: my programs to get companies to think differently.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a really interesting company. We featured them quite
Speaker 5: a bit here at Bloomberg. Willingness to pay a term
Speaker 5: you find in business school. Yes, the willingness to pay
Speaker 5: for an executive looking for an education is very high.
Speaker 5: For example, at Columbia, the executive MBA, how much do
Speaker 5: you think it costs per student?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's like forty thousand.
Speaker 5: Dollars two hundred and forty thousand for two years. Okay, okay,
Speaker 5: that's the executive NBA.
Speaker 1: You're looking years four years, two years, two years.
Speaker 5: That's two years. Yeah, that's the executive NBA. So that's
Speaker 5: the part time sure, yeah, I mean two years is yeah,
Speaker 5: but commitment Thursday, Friday, Saturday or whatever. Tuition for that
Speaker 5: was last year I can't find this year. So it's
Speaker 5: expected to go between two and seven percent per year.
Speaker 5: For the full time MBA, it's like ninety thousand dollars
Speaker 5: a year. You got to throw on some more fees
Speaker 5: and for two years.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you gotta pay twice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you gotta pay it twice. That's a lot of money. Yeah.
Speaker 5: How much do you make from more from the executives
Speaker 5: who come versus those in the twenty percent who are
Speaker 5: doing like the full time MBA versus the executive Yeah,
Speaker 5: because the willingness to pay for those execs. That's higher
Speaker 5: and the companies often pay for.
Speaker 11: It they do, and again you got to demonstrate that impact.
Speaker 11: So we're a nonprofit foundation, right, so our goal is
Speaker 11: to have universalsp No, of course they are right, you know,
Speaker 11: I mean it's hard to believe with some of the prices, right,
Speaker 11: but what we.
Speaker 1: Do is nothing right.
Speaker 11: Well, look, I mean what we do is expensive, right
Speaker 11: to have terrific faculty, you know, bring them together, support
Speaker 11: them so they can continue to do research and thought
Speaker 11: leadership at the cutting edge. Right, It's not cheap, and
Speaker 11: we put a fair amount of effort on raising funds
Speaker 11: for scholarships and running programs that or doing initiatives that
Speaker 11: make programs accessible. But you're quite right, there are lots
Speaker 11: of options. So you were asking me before about competition.
Speaker 11: There are the top business schools, of course that we
Speaker 11: compete with, but there are a lot of other providers.
Speaker 11: There's a lot of great content available, and so you
Speaker 11: really have to work hard on how do you design
Speaker 11: things that are impactful? How do you have pedagogy that
Speaker 11: lets people learn? As people get older, it gets harder
Speaker 11: to learn, so you've got to think harder about how
Speaker 11: do I put them in situations where they can learn,
Speaker 11: and so we're making ourselves accountable for the ri that
Speaker 11: we're generating. And when we can demonstrate the impact of learning,
Speaker 11: then the willingness to pay is clearly there. I think
Speaker 11: that's true both for degree and non degree ago.
Speaker 1: Right, so, just because we are Bloomberg, So for a week,
Speaker 1: what does it cost for a student?
Speaker 11: Yeah, so we run week long open programs. They tend
Speaker 11: to about ten to twelve thousand dollars, okay, for a
Speaker 11: week for an individual right now, Again we call it
Speaker 11: a week, but it may have started two weeks before
Speaker 11: with some exercises and activities and assessments and continues.
Speaker 7: Beyond that, we have some.
Speaker 11: Programs that are you know, three days, five six thousand,
Speaker 11: and then of course we have more affordable options. We
Speaker 11: run what we call sprints two weeks an hour a day,
Speaker 11: usually online, and you know, those are about nine hundred dollars.
Speaker 11: So it's still an important investment, but we do try
Speaker 11: to meet people at different price points.
Speaker 1: Very cool stuff. No, a lot of specifics, which makes
Speaker 1: it super interesting to hear about. David. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: good luck, Thank you, I appreciate it. Look forward to
Speaker 1: future conversations. David back. He's president elective IMD soon to
Speaker 1: be president come September. As we said, it's a global
Speaker 1: executive education platform joining us right here in our studio. David,
Speaker 1: thank you so much again.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
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Speaker 12: Act or want just live on you Tube.
Speaker 5: It's the Boss who doesn't like a little thunder rope.
Speaker 1: Who doesn't like a little Bruce Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 5: Excuse me, well, the Stone Pony. Yes, you hear those
Speaker 5: three words, And if you're like me and many others,
Speaker 5: you think of.
Speaker 4: One man, Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then to make no mistake of me, Jersey Girl,
Speaker 1: I can say, you can say.
Speaker 5: That the Boss certainly is a huge part of the
Speaker 5: Stone Pony. But as our next guest writes in a
Speaker 5: new book it was just out last month, it's not
Speaker 5: just a place for Springsteen and his fans, Carol, It's
Speaker 5: a place that has become a quote international rock pilgrimage
Speaker 5: for all types of musicians. And despite the fact that
Speaker 5: once renowned venues like CBGB and the Cavern Club, which
Speaker 5: is where the Beatles started. Those are gone. The Stone Pony,
Speaker 5: where Bruce got his start, it's still here.
Speaker 1: Nick Corsinidi is a political correspondent for The New York Times.
Speaker 1: He's the author of a new book, I Don't Want
Speaker 1: to Go Home, Oral History of the Stone Pony. And
Speaker 1: he joins us here in a Bloomberg studio. So someone
Speaker 1: who knows all about it. Welcome, Welcome, Thanks for having me,
Speaker 1: since you do cover well.
Speaker 5: Politics, Yeah, that's where we're going.
Speaker 1: We need to kind of start there if you don't mind, sure.
Speaker 1: How are you thinking about this environment? How do you
Speaker 1: think about democracy right now?
Speaker 13: Well, it's interesting how that's actually where that's being thrown
Speaker 13: around a lot, especially from the right, you know, President Trump,
Speaker 13: Trump's campaign speaker Johnson, Senator McConnell, they all had statements
Speaker 13: within an hour of Biden's letter being posted saying that
Speaker 13: this is undemocratic or disenfranchising the fourteen million voters who
Speaker 13: cast primary ballots for Biden, and they cast it for Biden,
Speaker 13: not for Biden Harris, and that you know, this was
Speaker 13: an anti democratic move. Now it's a bit of a
Speaker 13: difficult message for them. To carry just given everything that
Speaker 13: happened in January sixth, and you know a lot of
Speaker 13: voting laws that have been passed by Republican legislatures. But
Speaker 13: it's certainly something that's starting to catch on the votvoters.
Speaker 13: You know, there was a poll in the Washington Post
Speaker 13: about six weeks ago about the issue of democracy, and
Speaker 13: you know how important it was to voters, and it
Speaker 13: was more than sixty percent said it was extremely important. Now,
Speaker 13: the only thing that came close to that was the economy.
Speaker 13: So this is vitally important to voters. Yet they actually
Speaker 13: said in these six swing states that they trusted Trump
Speaker 13: a little bit more than Biden to handle those issues.
Speaker 13: So it's you know, it's something that's been defining for
Speaker 13: our politics for the last four years. You know, President
Speaker 13: Biden made his last major address before the midterms on
Speaker 13: issues of democracy, and then Democrats did very well in
Speaker 13: the midterms. So it's something that's very much to the
Speaker 13: forefront of the conversation. Is everything's happening with Vice President Harris,
Speaker 13: Democrats coalescing and all that.
Speaker 5: Is it fair to say that voting has changed just
Speaker 5: in the two years since the mid terms or in
Speaker 5: the four years since the twenty twenty election, Like have
Speaker 5: the rules in certain states changed, oh significantly, And there's
Speaker 5: often easier or harder to vote.
Speaker 13: It depends on where you are, and it depends on
Speaker 13: who you are. There's been, you know, efforts to limit
Speaker 13: mail voting especial, and so if you're in a state
Speaker 13: where they change the mail voting rules and you were
Speaker 13: once a mail voter, there's some things that you now
Speaker 13: have to be aware of. Like let's say in Wisconsin,
Speaker 13: there's been this whiplash about using dropboxes, which is where
Speaker 13: you can bring an ASDA ball drop it off just
Speaker 13: like a mailbox. A lot of voters love that because
Speaker 13: you're not bound by whether a voting office is open
Speaker 13: or not. Let's say you can't go during work hours
Speaker 13: you're a shift worker. You could only go at say
Speaker 13: six am or eight pm. You drop off your ballot.
Speaker 13: It's easier for the midterms. The Wisconsin Supreme Court said, no,
Speaker 13: you can't do that, so all those voters couldn't do
Speaker 13: that anymore. And then the newly constituted Wisconsin Supreme Court,
Speaker 13: which now means democratic even though they're nonpartisan. It was
Speaker 13: once conservative. Now they're putting them back right, so maybe
Speaker 13: voters can go use that. So that's just one example
Speaker 13: of like the shifts. And there's also the shift in
Speaker 13: the just the wholesale voting behaviors that is really kind
Speaker 13: of defined everything since the pandemic. You know, voting by
Speaker 13: mail used to kind of be a Republican advantage.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Florida and Georgia, Like in Georgia.
Speaker 13: Where it's become such a lashpoint where Republicans are limiting it.
Speaker 13: You know, it was the Republican governor who brought it
Speaker 13: to Georgia.
Speaker 5: George W.
Speaker 13: Bush and Carl Rover were absolute masters of the vote
Speaker 13: by mail and using the mail. You know, there's a
Speaker 13: whole book written about it by Asasa Eisenberg. So it's
Speaker 13: interesting to see the patterns behave the politics change, and
Speaker 13: then yeah, there's a lot of laws that have been changed.
Speaker 1: All right, speaking of a book, how does someone who
Speaker 1: covers voting rights and democracy at the New York Times.
Speaker 5: Come on, you need a break after doing that, and
Speaker 5: I read about something completely different.
Speaker 1: Write a book about the Stone Pony.
Speaker 13: So I in between the sixteen and twenty elections, I
Speaker 13: was the New Jersey correspondent. I grew up going to
Speaker 13: the Stone Pony, and I grew up, you know, going
Speaker 13: to Asbury Park to see punk music. And when I
Speaker 13: was going in the nineties, in the early two thousands,
Speaker 13: Asbury was very different. To put it lightly, it was
Speaker 13: kind of dangerous. It was a ghost town.
Speaker 7: It was very rough.
Speaker 13: You know, there was abandoned buildings everywhere. There was this
Speaker 13: structure that was like an abandoned skeleton of like an
Speaker 13: apartment complex that had been failed multiple times. It just
Speaker 13: like you couldn't believe it that on the Jersey Shore,
Speaker 13: you know, this finite like Gold Coast on the East Coast,
Speaker 13: that this one town could just be so desolate. And
Speaker 13: that was my experience, but that was our stage.
Speaker 7: So we went.
Speaker 13: And then due to covering politics and moving to DC
Speaker 13: and going to college away from New Jersey, I hadn't
Speaker 13: seen Asbury for a while until I came back in
Speaker 13: twenty seventeen, and I.
Speaker 7: Was like, what happened?
Speaker 13: And so, you know, as a Jersey correspondent, I was
Speaker 13: still a political reporter, so I still had to cover
Speaker 13: you know, the new Governor Murphy Corey Booker's eventual presidential campaign.
Speaker 13: That was still like my main assignment. But I could
Speaker 13: still cover some of the culture. I wanted to tell
Speaker 13: this story about this town that bounced back because, especially
Speaker 13: having covered the twenty sixteen campaign, we learned about for
Speaker 13: every Asbury there's one hundred failed small towns, right. I
Speaker 13: wanted to tell that story that got at the spirit
Speaker 13: of what Asbury is. And it's a music town, and
Speaker 13: so I didn't want to just be like, it's got
Speaker 13: a hotel and you know, some new restaurants and investors,
Speaker 13: and well, that's all important, and you have to tell that.
Speaker 13: That wasn't the spirit. That felt important to me, to
Speaker 13: tell why this town's renaissance is important. And so I
Speaker 13: was like, Hey, this stone Pony's still there somehow magically
Speaker 13: in like open defiance of the expected lifespan of a
Speaker 13: rock club. Let me use that as my narrative trojan
Speaker 13: Horse to tell the story of Ezbray.
Speaker 5: Park Nick the Boss. Bruce Springsteen, he writes an introduction.
Speaker 5: You got him for the intro, But it's not just
Speaker 5: Bruce Springsteen who you spoke to for this book. Steve
Speaker 5: van Zandtlofgrin, the Jonas Brothers. All three are there more
Speaker 5: than three Jonas brothers. The Jonas Brothers are three in
Speaker 5: the band. There's just three okay, in the band, there's
Speaker 5: three Jack Johnson. It's an incredible lineup, John Popper, Russell
Speaker 5: Crowe as well Patti Smith. Talk to us about how
Speaker 5: you were able to get all these incredible people to
Speaker 5: speak to you for this.
Speaker 13: From the political world, you're kind of used to just
Speaker 13: slowly pulling threads to get more people to talk to you.
Speaker 13: You know, one leads to another. Hey, do you know
Speaker 13: this person? Can you help introduce me to this?
Speaker 5: We've got Chris Christie and that would make sense because
Speaker 5: you're a political report. I did Chris Christie.
Speaker 13: That was actually while he was campaigning for president. We
Speaker 13: did a video interview. Yeah, we just we did a
Speaker 13: video interview and that was like my New York Times thing,
Speaker 13: and then we shifted to lunch where we talked about
Speaker 13: the pony. And then I went to his event later
Speaker 13: and wrote a.
Speaker 4: Story off that, which interview was longer the pony one.
Speaker 4: He's a big fan, clearly, but it's you know it.
Speaker 13: I also think what was interesting to me was how
Speaker 13: many people were willing to talk. And I think it
Speaker 13: just speaks to this the weird draw or allure that
Speaker 13: the Stone Pony has for so many artists in part
Speaker 13: because of the spirit that like Springsteen, South Side and
Speaker 13: Steviee kind of like imbued in the place. Tom Morello
Speaker 13: calls him the good ghosts that are in the Pony,
Speaker 13: And I think so many artists feel that, and it
Speaker 13: really is kind of like it works for so many
Speaker 13: different genres, right Like Patti Smith felt that and she
Speaker 13: felt such a connection to the club because it felt
Speaker 13: like one of those clubs that helped her establish herself
Speaker 13: in New York, the same way that like Mike McCready felt,
Speaker 13: the guitarist and Pearl Jam felt an amazing connection there
Speaker 13: because it reminded him of his origins when like crowds
Speaker 13: were on top of you and you know, you could
Speaker 13: see everyone in the crowd so clear that you could
Speaker 13: read their beer labels, and what that felt like as
Speaker 13: a musician. There's a common phrase that like, you play
Speaker 13: small rock clubs when you're on your way up and
Speaker 13: when you're on your way down. But I think the
Speaker 13: Pony kind of cuts across that a little bit because
Speaker 13: it creates that bond with a lot of artists that
Speaker 13: they want to get something back that they've lost as
Speaker 13: they've moved up and they still play it. Russell Crow's
Speaker 13: a great example. He was playing with this band thirty
Speaker 13: Out for Grunts he's had for forever, and he booked
Speaker 13: a tour right before Gladiator comes out when he's you know,
Speaker 13: sexiest man in the world, one of the most A
Speaker 13: List celebrities of all A list celebrities, and he had
Speaker 13: booked Madison Square Garden Theater, not the full garden but
Speaker 13: still like a six thousand person venue, and then the
Speaker 13: Pony it's about six hundred and so once he's a megastar,
Speaker 13: they were like, well, you got to cancel the Pony
Speaker 13: because you're in the radius now, and he was like, no,
Speaker 13: I'm going to cancel the Garden.
Speaker 4: I don't need that.
Speaker 13: I want to do I want to do the Stone
Speaker 13: Pony and like that just and he has an interesting
Speaker 13: story in the book how he was actually going to
Speaker 13: play in New York on September tenth, two thousand one.
Speaker 13: So playing at the Pony actually might have because he
Speaker 13: was staying at a hotel right next to the Towers,
Speaker 13: might have, you know, saved his life. But just the
Speaker 13: fact that he gave up five five hundred fans to
Speaker 13: play at the Pony and what that would feel like,
Speaker 13: I think speaks to how so many people feel about them.
Speaker 5: Are you not entertained you say that, I'm sorry?
Speaker 1: I mean, how did it come to be?
Speaker 11: Well?
Speaker 13: It opened in you know, kind of a desperate time
Speaker 13: for Hasburry Park. It had experienced pretty traumatic race riots
Speaker 13: a few years beforehand, and that caused some pretty big flight.
Speaker 13: But what that also did is, as Stevie van Zandt
Speaker 13: says so lyrically in the book, it left it to
Speaker 13: us rockers, rogues, mystics and renegades. And I just I
Speaker 13: can like, we'll always hear him saying that, yeah in
Speaker 13: my head, and he just says it so effortlessly because
Speaker 13: he's just such a lyrical person. That created the scene
Speaker 13: of musicians that you know, you wouldn't expect to find
Speaker 13: on the Jersey Shore. You find it in Motown, in
Speaker 13: Nashville and New Orleans, but then for some reason you
Speaker 13: had it in Asbury Park. And once Springsteen starts taking off,
Speaker 13: people start paying attention to it, and then Southside Johnny
Speaker 13: and the Asbury Jukes start and they kind of really
Speaker 13: helped create this sound of music. It's rock and roll
Speaker 13: with horns and gospel and soul and R and B,
Speaker 13: and it was a sound you hadn't heard elsewhere, and
Speaker 13: it was dancy, and people wanted to dance to rock
Speaker 13: music again. Right like the whole guitar slinger thing. It
Speaker 13: kind of made people watch music. You were dancing again
Speaker 13: and people love that, and Bruce loved that, so he
Speaker 13: starts coming. People start learning about it. There's a famous
Speaker 13: broadcast of a South Side Johnny show in seventy six
Speaker 13: on eleven radio stations across the country, and that wasn't
Speaker 13: done that much. So now there's a scene and a
Speaker 13: sound and everyone wants to start coming. And then when
Speaker 13: Bruce becomes really famous, it also becomes his home. And
Speaker 13: you know, he says in the book, the things of
Speaker 13: celebrity that would bring you to New York in LA
Speaker 13: and all the things that normal people would do didn't
Speaker 13: interest me. What interested me was where I was from.
Speaker 13: These people mattered to me, and this place was interesting
Speaker 13: to me. And sustaining that scene, I mean, imagine right now,
Speaker 13: like if Taylor Swift picked a six hundred person club
Speaker 13: and just showed up there on Tuesday, people be camping
Speaker 13: out right like you wouldn't even like it within ten
Speaker 13: block radius. He was that famous after born born in
Speaker 13: the USA, so that he was still doing it created
Speaker 13: this spontaneity that lives on there, and it's it's maybe
Speaker 13: Brust will show up, but also it's maybe like I'm seeing,
Speaker 13: you know, a metal band, and maybe Zach Wilde shows up,
Speaker 13: and or you know, I'm seeing a punk band and
Speaker 13: maybe I'm seeing Take Back Sunday and the guys from
Speaker 13: Brand New come out, or I'm seeing you know, Midtown
Speaker 13: and Brian fallon.
Speaker 1: Because it continues.
Speaker 13: It's the spirit of the place and like the truest
Speaker 13: sense of the word, and it really, I think has
Speaker 13: just stuck in a way that like you can't take
Speaker 13: it out, and that's what keeps artists from coming back.
Speaker 5: You writ in the book about the transformation of Asbury,
Speaker 5: and I'm wondering if the Stone Pony will live on
Speaker 5: into the future because it has changed the area around
Speaker 5: it has changed so much.
Speaker 4: It's a great question.
Speaker 13: I think everyone in Asbury recognizes that the Stone Pony
Speaker 13: is the kind of spiritual, beating heart and soul of Asbury,
Speaker 13: and so as the towns come back in a kind
Speaker 13: of very organic way, they've done a great job at
Speaker 13: preserving that there's new condos, you know, the six million
Speaker 13: dollar condo. There's new development, but I think they understand
Speaker 13: that you can't touch the pony. You have to leave
Speaker 13: it there, and you kind of have to leave the
Speaker 13: summer stage there too, because it's become such a part
Speaker 13: of town, and like, you know, it's like this mini
Speaker 13: festival feel every night, and the sounds echo across the boardwalk,
Speaker 13: so like, even if you don't have a ticket, you
Speaker 13: were three blocks away on the boardwalk, you could hear,
Speaker 13: you know, them playing hopeless Romantic and so.
Speaker 4: That's pretty cool.
Speaker 13: You can't you just can't remove that. If you do,
Speaker 13: it's not Asbury anymore, right, it's just another wealthy beach town.
Speaker 1: Two bouncers did this right exactly.
Speaker 13: It started by two bouncers who were just like, I
Speaker 13: want to do my own thing, and they did. And
Speaker 13: you know, it's had its ups and downs. It's closed twice,
Speaker 13: and it's certainly not a bouncer run bar anymore. It's
Speaker 13: backed by major industry support, including Live Nation, but you
Speaker 13: know it persists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, listen, everybody talks about Asbury Park. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's just something so much more. Nick, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. Really appreciate it. Did course a need.
Speaker 1: He has a new book out. He's, of course political
Speaker 1: correspondent for the New York Times. The book I Don't
Speaker 1: Want to Go Home, The Oral History of the Stone Pony.
Speaker 1: This is really fun. Thank you so much. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live
Speaker 2: each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on applecar Play
Speaker 2: and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can
Speaker 2: also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New
Speaker 2: York station, Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty, The Cost.
Speaker 1: Of Longevity, the best pasta New York City, He doys
Speaker 1: go hand in hand, well, so we'll explain. And the
Speaker 1: right hat to upgrade your summer wardrobe. It's all in
Speaker 1: the latest edition of Bloomberg Pursuit, which you can read
Speaker 1: online on the Bloomberg and in the August edition of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg BusinessWeek Magazine. As we said now on newsstands.
Speaker 5: I promise also will tell you the right rolex to
Speaker 5: go with that hat, not like the quiet leg like
Speaker 5: you know, yeah, not like I don't know, but who does?
Speaker 5: And that's Chris Rouser. He's the editor of Blason all
Speaker 5: your role x needs. All right, we'll get to Rolexes
Speaker 5: in a minute, but first, Carol and I want to
Speaker 5: talk about living forever because longevity is so hot right now.
Speaker 5: Is it Brian Johnson's fault?
Speaker 4: And probably we I feel like Business Week actually really
Speaker 4: brought Brian Johnson into the public conversation. And now you know,
Speaker 4: a lot of people are talking about him and following him,
Speaker 4: and he's making products. But actually longevity itself is a
Speaker 4: bit passe. It's your health span that everyone's talking about.
Speaker 1: Can you explain that term? I don't even think I
Speaker 1: know how to use it in a sentence.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, we had arguments with a copy desk about
Speaker 4: how to capitalize it, whether it was two words, because
Speaker 4: it is kind of a new ish thing. Lifespan is
Speaker 4: how long you live, Okay, health span is how long
Speaker 4: you live. Well, so you know, if we Americans are
Speaker 4: living longer and longer, everyone can expect to live to
Speaker 4: seventy seven or more. If you're living to ninety, but
Speaker 4: you're stuck in a chair, you're breaking bones, all that stuff,
Speaker 4: it's not valuable time, you know, and health span is
Speaker 4: maximizing that time. So that you're not breaking bones, you're well,
Speaker 4: you're mentally aware, and you're having fun until all the
Speaker 4: way until the end.
Speaker 1: So I take a pill and that's how I do it.
Speaker 4: You wish it's actually a shot or a shot. So
Speaker 4: last year Peter at TIA's book Outlive came out and
Speaker 4: it was very much about this. It was about medicine
Speaker 4: three point zero, which is preventative and predictive medicine. Rather
Speaker 4: than you bonk your head you go to a doctor,
Speaker 4: it's like a doctor looks at your whole body. You
Speaker 4: talk about nutrition, you talk about fitness, you talk about
Speaker 4: all the different ways that you can expand your health span.
Speaker 4: So that has been very much in the public consciousness
Speaker 4: for a couple of years now, and now there are
Speaker 4: a bunch of companies that are trying to provide services
Speaker 4: to help you do that. Because if you read Peter's book,
Speaker 4: the recommendations for fitness and stuff can be eight, nine,
Speaker 4: ten plus hours a week. You're just doing that on
Speaker 4: your own, maybe that's like a little bit hard to manage.
Speaker 4: You're supposed to do stuff about your grip strength, you're
Speaker 4: supposed to be doing yoga, you're supposed to be doing
Speaker 4: an hour V two mex Wait, grip strain.
Speaker 7: Yes, there's a.
Speaker 4: Whole chapter on grip strength. Okay, so anyway, it can
Speaker 4: be kind of onerous once it gets to like rocking,
Speaker 4: which is carrying around stuff with carrying on a heavy
Speaker 4: backpack for an hour, Like, is that why you load
Speaker 4: up your backpack?
Speaker 5: No, that's not why I lit up on the backpack.
Speaker 5: But it's why people will walk in vests that are weighted, yes,
Speaker 5: and wear backpacks that have just heavy objects in them
Speaker 5: without a purpose. Right, Well, her purpose is rocking.
Speaker 4: Like some of us carry around our children. Other people
Speaker 4: carry around forty pound backpacks. So there's a bunch of
Speaker 4: companies that are here to sort of help you do
Speaker 4: this and manage it. Do the testing, do the MRIs,
Speaker 4: do the fitness recommendations, do the nutrition all.
Speaker 1: That you could go?
Speaker 5: Do you even rock?
Speaker 2: Bro?
Speaker 4: When I got to the chapter in Peter Tya his
Speaker 4: book about grip strength, I was like, I don't know
Speaker 4: if I could do this. It's too much.
Speaker 1: Let's go get a bowl of ice cream.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So wait, Mark Elwood who wrote this story, right, he
Speaker 1: actually went through some testing, right, because it involves I
Speaker 1: feel like there's one company he talks about a lot
Speaker 1: of spitting into vials.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Mark did a company that's based in London
Speaker 4: called Vavi and it was founded by doctor sabine To
Speaker 4: and it's actually been around for a while. It opened
Speaker 4: in two thousand and nine. And this is really one
Speaker 4: of the great sort of originators of this. You know,
Speaker 4: it's a nice quiet office. You go, you get a
Speaker 4: bunch of tests in the mail before you go to
Speaker 4: actually even meet with a doctor. Some of them are
Speaker 4: spit tests, some of them are fitness tests, and then
Speaker 4: you go and talk to a doctor who really goes
Speaker 4: through a whole litany of exams that you'd do an MRI.
Speaker 4: They do DNA testing to see if you have markers
Speaker 4: for certain conditions that could become problematic.
Speaker 5: When you're older.
Speaker 4: They do your weight tests, they make you run on
Speaker 4: a treadmill, all this stuff, and then they come back
Speaker 4: to you with recommendations and hers are sense to me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean it feels like what you do in a physical.
Speaker 4: But usually you go for a physical, it's twenty minutes
Speaker 4: and then you never hear anything, and it's you would
Speaker 4: find out whether you're a cholesterol this.
Speaker 5: Quarterback, Okay, it kind of makes sense to you, Carol,
Speaker 5: I get it. It's expensive though. It's the type of
Speaker 5: thing that costs a lot of money. Chris, give us
Speaker 5: the costs, but also tell us what does the established
Speaker 5: medical community say about this rise in health span?
Speaker 4: So it can be quite expensive. I mean the stuff
Speaker 4: that we're talking about, generally managing your health and doing
Speaker 4: a good job is something you can do for free.
Speaker 4: But these companies, we wanted to do this story because
Speaker 4: there's a new one in New York called Continuum, which
Speaker 4: is ten thousand dollars a month. Equinox has a program
Speaker 4: which is forty thousand dollars a year they just started.
Speaker 4: So it can be quite expensive. But this idea of
Speaker 4: working with a doctor who you actually see and knows
Speaker 4: you well enough to make kind of preemptive recommendations is
Speaker 4: something that would be really great and is really widely
Speaker 4: regarded as like something that we don't have in the
Speaker 4: United States that we should have. The average person can
Speaker 4: expect to spend seventeen minutes with a doctor during a visit.
Speaker 4: We've all been there, and maybe that's not enough.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they book every fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: You had an appointment this week, and you're like, I
Speaker 1: know I'm going to have X amount of time. You
Speaker 1: had your list going in and you're like, I'm just
Speaker 1: going to go through it.
Speaker 5: And the doctor still made a mistake.
Speaker 1: Yeah I made it.
Speaker 4: Yeah you caught him on the mistake.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, I caught him. I won't get into that.
Speaker 5: He definitely made a mistake. You let's just say he's
Speaker 5: apped the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: Oh no, Tim's okay, it's okay, and the right thing
Speaker 1: got zapped.
Speaker 4: Okay, You've still got your beautiful face. The impact. You know,
Speaker 4: in America, only three percent of funds that are spent
Speaker 4: on healthcare are spent on preventative medicine, and that that
Speaker 4: should really change. Actually, and so there's a lot that
Speaker 4: can be done in this department.
Speaker 5: But what does the established medical community say about these
Speaker 5: types of products and services, Because you do quote some
Speaker 5: folks in there who say people know how to be healthy,
Speaker 5: They know that they need to eat well, move you,
Speaker 5: get exercise, reduce stress. Those are the basics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's critics of this, this sort of idea. I
Speaker 4: think nobody wants you to get in the way of
Speaker 4: you eating well, being healthy, exercising, doing stuff that will
Speaker 4: make you feel better when you're older. There is a
Speaker 4: group of critics of this field where say basically like
Speaker 4: we know what to do to live well. You eat well,
Speaker 4: you exercise, you take care of yourself. You have people
Speaker 4: to take care of you. So there's a placebo effect
Speaker 4: to a bit of it, which is one of the
Speaker 4: critics says about this, which is like basically, when you
Speaker 4: read Peter Atilla's book, part of what you like about
Speaker 4: it is that it's telling you to do stuff that
Speaker 4: you already do. So you're you're like, oh wow, great,
Speaker 4: Like I already exercise, I already rock.
Speaker 1: You know everybody, I don't think any of us rock.
Speaker 4: And they've done studies to show that even going to
Speaker 4: the to the store and putting like nutritional supplements in
Speaker 4: your basket makes you feel better. You know, Like there
Speaker 4: is just sort of idea of like I'm doing something
Speaker 4: and maybe we don't need We definitely don't need all
Speaker 4: these MRIs, like MRIs are a big part of this.
Speaker 4: Kim Kardashian was posting a video of her on her
Speaker 4: Instagram unpaid talking about how great MRIs are, and people
Speaker 4: were like, let's not recommend like unnecessary medicine and things
Speaker 4: that people can't forward.
Speaker 1: Right now, but there is something to this idea of
Speaker 1: how to stay healthier rather than like you go to
Speaker 1: a doctor when you're sick. You know, this concept of
Speaker 1: just taking care of yourself like kind of makes sense.
Speaker 1: Or you could just eat pasta. Yeah, I don't have
Speaker 1: an easy sa.
Speaker 4: No, please eat pasta. I love pasta. List Oh my god,
Speaker 4: that's a good choice. So we have this regular thing
Speaker 4: we do where we talk to top chefs in different
Speaker 4: cities and we get their recommendations on their favorite places
Speaker 4: to eat. So, you know, maybe it's sushi and tokyo,
Speaker 4: and we've done pizza in Rome, and so we did
Speaker 4: pasta in New York City. This is for the August
Speaker 4: issue of BusinessWeek. You may not think of August as
Speaker 4: a time when you want to have like a big,
Speaker 4: hardy bowl of pasta in hot, hot New York City,
Speaker 4: but Andrew Carmelini, who's one of the city's best chefs,
Speaker 4: said that he tried to take the carbonara off of
Speaker 4: his menu at our premium the East Village in the summer.
Speaker 4: He was like, we should do something lighter, like let's
Speaker 4: make it less like freamy and rich, and people freaked out.
Speaker 4: And he was like, no, you know what, Actually, kinda
Speaker 4: in the summer, people really want a big bowl of pasta.
Speaker 4: So Kate came up with all these recommendations. There is
Speaker 4: actually eighteen online, so you should go online to read
Speaker 4: the full thing. But there's the Buffalo Milk Caramel at
Speaker 4: don Angie in the village. There's Peachy al Arabiazza lod
Speaker 4: Eye in Midtown, which a lot of us love because
Speaker 4: we work not too far away. And the Cavatelli with
Speaker 4: Jamaican beef ragu at Teresi, And so if you can
Speaker 4: get in, good luck is really incredible.
Speaker 1: I've actually eaten at Resdora with Kate and that was
Speaker 1: quite an experience. I highly recommend you know what.
Speaker 5: I like about restaurant, But it's a list of places
Speaker 5: I've never been, always aspirational. You can there's one in Brooklyn,
Speaker 5: Daphne in Brooklyn. You can get Yeah, let's go. I
Speaker 5: have beef beef cheek ragou. Let's go there.
Speaker 7: What could be better?
Speaker 1: You're talking about pasta earlier.
Speaker 5: It's actually today's my favorite food. Plasta's my favorite food.
Speaker 5: So this is perfect.
Speaker 1: It's kind of perfect. Speaking of perfect, how about picking
Speaker 1: a perfect hat. Tim showed me a picture of a
Speaker 1: hat he wears on the weekends. It is not this
Speaker 1: kind of like he's on safari. I can picture it.
Speaker 1: I know exactly what it is. My husband has the
Speaker 1: same hate. There's no sun penetrating any of it. I
Speaker 1: kind of love this some fun hats.
Speaker 5: The type of hat that I wear is not the
Speaker 5: type of hat that one would wear if they were
Speaker 5: seeking a mate. Let's just say that. Okay, Okay, so
Speaker 5: it's a good hat for people who are coupled. Okay,
Speaker 5: so not a good hat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is the kind of stuff that comes out
Speaker 1: after the rings on the finger.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is like, you know what, I'm not concerned
Speaker 5: in that department.
Speaker 4: These are a mix that this is. So we did
Speaker 4: a story that's like how it's not too late to
Speaker 4: be a hat person. August is a great time, maybe
Speaker 4: even recommended by your doctor time to wear a big
Speaker 4: hat to cover it, to get the sun out of
Speaker 4: your face. And we have a really great mix of
Speaker 4: cool hats and then also sort of silly hats. I
Speaker 4: would argue that the cool hats are the silly hats.
Speaker 4: There's a great visor that just says the weekend on it.
Speaker 4: I think Tim has that his name written all over it.
Speaker 5: Please please make it happen. What I love about these, though,
Speaker 5: is you can get a hat for fifty dollars up
Speaker 5: to fifteen hundred dollars, so it really runs the gamut.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's like I was going to say, you think
Speaker 4: product doesn't make hats, lot To makes hats.
Speaker 1: I kind of love the one with the netting. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of.
Speaker 4: Yes, does that. Yeah, there's one with netting by Steven Jones,
Speaker 4: who's a real like crazy milliner like he like hote Coatur.
Speaker 4: You see his hats on the runway.
Speaker 5: Is the Prada hat missing some materials because it looks
Speaker 5: like you get a sunburn in the shape of triangles
Speaker 5: all over your body. Yeah.
Speaker 4: The Prada hat is a bucket hat that has these
Speaker 4: It's woven and has these triangle cutouts. It's I would
Speaker 4: say it's more of a fashion excess.
Speaker 1: Hat triangles. I also do like the one. Is it
Speaker 1: number five on the list. It's from Paris, Casablanca, Paris.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, just really cutee very cute.
Speaker 1: Well look good on your daughter.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that would look.
Speaker 1: Nice before we go, because we love you and you
Speaker 1: are Chris Rouser and we always check out what watch
Speaker 1: you're wearing.
Speaker 4: It's an Apple Watch today the quiet Rolex always bust
Speaker 4: me when I wear an Apple Watch. Yes, what is that?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 4: Rolex last year at the at the big trade show
Speaker 4: in Geneva, launched a totally new watch, which is unusual
Speaker 4: for them. They don't do that a lot. And it
Speaker 4: looks nothing like.
Speaker 1: Any Cimex, which I love.
Speaker 5: Timexes said, the Lex looks like a Times.
Speaker 1: Because it's very classic.
Speaker 4: It's very classic. It's called a perpetual nineteen oh eight.
Speaker 1: Chris is like, I can't talk to Master anymore.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm leaving.
Speaker 4: Well, So it came out last year and I you know,
Speaker 4: I didn't love it. I was like, I don't get
Speaker 4: why Rolex is doing this. It's a classic dress watch.
Speaker 4: It came in yellow or white, gold, black or white face.
Speaker 4: It looked very simple and they have these like big
Speaker 4: sports watches that people Everyone really likes that from them.
Speaker 4: The cool thing about it though, is that it has
Speaker 4: a transparent back. Of this line these nineteen oh eights
Speaker 4: and the whole thing about Rolex is they deprioritize the
Speaker 4: workings of the watch, which is what a lot of
Speaker 4: companies are like this. We have these amazing movements. Open
Speaker 4: up the back you can see look at the amazing watchmaking.
Speaker 4: And Rolex's thing has always been not about what their
Speaker 4: watchmaking says about them, but what you wearing a Rolex
Speaker 4: says about you. So you're not really supposed to be
Speaker 4: like showing off the mechanics and all of that. And
Speaker 4: so this line does show off the mechanics. And they
Speaker 4: came out with a new version, a new one this
Speaker 4: year that's Platinum, has this ice blued geochet dial. The
Speaker 4: line didn't make sense to me last year, but this
Speaker 4: one is so cool. It's very chic. I really get it.
Speaker 4: It's like a tradition, Platinum last forever. It's so strong.
Speaker 4: I really sort of see a new tradition coming out
Speaker 4: of this.
Speaker 1: And only cost what thirty thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: Only costs thirty thirty one thousand dollars.
Speaker 5: Like a TIMEX.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Whenever Brad the new editor or a BusinessWeek asks he's
Speaker 4: a watch in the section, he says, how much is
Speaker 4: that watch? I said, this one is a very affordable
Speaker 4: thirty one thousand.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a five figure watch rather than a six
Speaker 5: figure watch. Hey, a big thank you to Chris Rauser.
Speaker 5: He's the editor of Bloomberg Pursuits. You love him, and
Speaker 5: we love him.
Speaker 6: We certainly do.
Speaker 1: That wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg.
Speaker 9: Ready.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he still loves me, since it
Speaker 1: makes no I love it all right. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. Everybody.
Speaker 4: I'm Tim Stanoveek, I'm Carol Masser.
Speaker 1: Have a good and safe weekend. Wear a hat, everybody.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
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