Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
Speaker 2: weekdays at ten am Eastern on apocarplaying and broud Auto
Speaker 2: with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Let's get more on you Mish my favorite indicator. Joanshu Is,
Speaker 3: University of Michigan, Surveys of Consumer Director breaking down these
Speaker 3: numbers for us, Joanne, it feels like it's a non mover. Really,
Speaker 3: like everything is status quo. Can you walk me through
Speaker 3: what you see in these numbers? Absolutely so.
Speaker 4: Overall it is essentially flat from last from last month. However,
Speaker 4: that does obscure some pretty substantial movements within the population.
Speaker 3: First of all, you know, election news has.
Speaker 4: Been really dominating the headlines, and we see that in
Speaker 4: our data. Sentiment for Democrats improved six percent this month,
Speaker 4: but this ended up being offset by a five decline
Speaker 4: for Republicans. And these movements were entirely in expectations, which
Speaker 4: is sensible given that you know, election developments. Kamala Harris
Speaker 4: becoming the new nominee for the Democrats is not something
Speaker 4: that affects current assessments, But is something that affects people's
Speaker 4: outlook for the future, and.
Speaker 5: How can we expect that to evolve as we get
Speaker 5: closer to the election.
Speaker 6: Since we are still only in mid August.
Speaker 4: It's going to be volatile, or that's what I would expect.
Speaker 4: So far, consumers are really folding in who they think
Speaker 4: is going to win the election. But of course, as
Speaker 4: the campaign season evolves, people's expectations for the election are
Speaker 4: going to change, and as such their their future expectations
Speaker 4: for the macroeconomy will as well.
Speaker 3: What are some of the other things that you noticed,
Speaker 3: just in terms of either future expectation or current conditions,
Speaker 3: I should say which did improve?
Speaker 4: Yeah, current conditions really didn't move much at all, and
Speaker 4: if anything, it edged down just a little bit. Consumers
Speaker 4: continue to be very frustrated by hype prices that continues
Speaker 4: to be top of mind. At the same time, consumers
Speaker 4: do expect inflation to continue stabilizing. They've been already. They
Speaker 4: weren't really reacting to a CPI print or any data
Speaker 4: that came out this month. They were really already folding
Speaker 4: in their experiences throughout the month, their own experiences shopping
Speaker 4: and seeing the prices around them.
Speaker 5: And just looking at the report, so we see thirty
Speaker 5: five percent respondents expect unemployment rate to rise in the
Speaker 5: coming year. Growing number expect interest rates to pull back.
Speaker 5: How does that kind of impact consumer sentiment and kind
Speaker 5: of where we could be in the coming months.
Speaker 4: So consumers aren't really that concerned right now that labor
Speaker 4: markets may be softening. So the thirty five percent expecting
Speaker 4: unemployment rates to go up, that's unchanged from last month,
Speaker 4: So that's pretty stable. Income expectations have edged up, improved
Speaker 4: just a little bit, or have gone sideways. There's no
Speaker 4: weakening in consumer views of labor markets in August. That
Speaker 4: being said, strength and labor markets is precisely It has
Speaker 4: supported robust consumer spending over the last two years in
Speaker 4: spite of the fact that consumers don't feel like they're thriving.
Speaker 4: And so if there is some unraveling in labor markets,
Speaker 4: some softening in labor markets, I would expect consumers to
Speaker 4: pull back.
Speaker 3: All right, Joan, that being yeah, oh no, finish up. Sorry, yeah.
Speaker 4: And part of the reason why that consumers I think
Speaker 4: feel some confidence about labor markets is that they do
Speaker 4: expect interest rates to come down in the year ahead.
Speaker 3: Which leads us right back to the FED. Hey, Joanne,
Speaker 3: we do appreciate it, thank you very much. Joining to
Speaker 3: the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumer Director. Joining us
Speaker 3: on those numbers, A sentiment came in a touch better,
Speaker 3: current conditions a touch flower, and expectations a touch higher
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
Speaker 2: weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play and Android
Speaker 2: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen
Speaker 2: live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station.
Speaker 2: Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 3: All right, let's get in here now and talk about
Speaker 3: how you think about these markets after the volatility that
Speaker 3: we've seen the last couple weeks. But if you went
Speaker 3: on vacation two weeks ago and came back now, you
Speaker 3: didn't really miss much at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: which is also kind of crazy. Shana Sissel joins us.
Speaker 3: She's president and CEO of Benri owned Capital Management, and
Speaker 3: she joins us, Now, Shana, isn't that funny two weeks ago.
Speaker 3: It's like it never happened. I mean, that kind of
Speaker 3: rebound in the S and P is quite striking. How
Speaker 3: does that set you up now for the next couple months.
Speaker 7: I always say the best thing we can do for
Speaker 7: clients sometimes is maybe take away their password to their
Speaker 7: brokerage accounts so they're not checking it every day, because
Speaker 7: if they didn't, they would sleep a lot better at
Speaker 7: night for that exact reason. The market has short memory
Speaker 7: these days because we have so much information out there
Speaker 7: in the twenty four hour news cycle. But I think
Speaker 7: the volatility, you know, Professor Siegel was on another network
Speaker 7: earlier this week taking back everything he said when the
Speaker 7: panic set in, and if the professionals that but you know,
Speaker 7: investors look to for guidance, are inclined to panic, I
Speaker 7: think that that says a lot about kind of the
Speaker 7: overall sentiment and psychology of the market right now. So
Speaker 7: it doesn't surprise me that, you know, as information became available,
Speaker 7: people stopped freaking out about the end carry trade. But
Speaker 7: it doesn't change the fact that we are in a
Speaker 7: slowing economy. We've had good data, and so I think
Speaker 7: people feel confident the FED is definitely going to cut
Speaker 7: twenty five basis points in September, and I think that
Speaker 7: if you are a long term investor that there's some
Speaker 7: opportunities when people freak out like that to take advantage of,
Speaker 7: you know, the psychology of the market and buy things
Speaker 7: at a discount.
Speaker 5: Shanna Jackson Hole next week, What are you looking for
Speaker 5: from j Powell? What can you say that can either
Speaker 5: reinforce the view that we're going to get a twenty
Speaker 5: five if not a fifty basis point cut, or could
Speaker 5: he even kind of throw a wrench into things and
Speaker 5: maybe push that for they're out again.
Speaker 7: I can't imagine where he's going to throw a wrench
Speaker 7: in things. I do think that fifty base points is
Speaker 7: a stretch. There's not enough data that suggests that we
Speaker 7: need to do a larger than expected cut, and I
Speaker 7: think the Fed is cautious to not do something so
Speaker 7: abrupt and significant that it would upset the overall market sentiments.
Speaker 7: As I've noted a couple of times, does matter, and
Speaker 7: I expect that he will continue the same narrative that
Speaker 7: he's had for quite some time, which is that the
Speaker 7: economy is stable, it's doing okay. That data shows that
Speaker 7: it's slowing down and softening, but not of concern, and
Speaker 7: it supports a twenty five base point cut, and I
Speaker 7: think that's what he'll continue to say. I've watched him
Speaker 7: long enough now to know that he's not one to
Speaker 7: like very quickly change his tone. Last time he was
Speaker 7: out speaking, he was, you know, not necessarily overly dubvish,
Speaker 7: and I don't expect him to suddenly become overly duvish.
Speaker 3: Which to be fair, most other ex FRED presidents aren't either.
Speaker 3: So there's that as well. So we're kind of like
Speaker 3: wrapping up the earning season. We got some retail that's
Speaker 3: trickling out obviously in video is going to be a
Speaker 3: big event at the end of August. But what stocks
Speaker 3: do you like after we're kind of past the real
Speaker 3: hump of earning season headed into an election cycle or
Speaker 3: policy will be very unclear.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So I have kind of a wide variety of
Speaker 7: different types of stocks that I like. You know, I
Speaker 7: like a name like Atlas Holdings, which is Ensure, a
Speaker 7: commercial insurance firm, followed it for a while since my
Speaker 7: days at Ariel, and it's a really interesting company with
Speaker 7: a really unique niche that is trading at a discount
Speaker 7: and has some relatively attractive upside. Pretty born, it's in financials.
Speaker 7: You know, so people it's not sexy like in video
Speaker 7: or any of the AI plays. V RT is an
Speaker 7: AI play, but it's a second derivative of traditional AI.
Speaker 7: It's data center cooling, which is really important because in
Speaker 7: you know, this growing AI demand and more and more
Speaker 7: people looking to incorporate it, you need greater computing power,
Speaker 7: and thus you need a lot stronger or a lot
Speaker 7: more powerful cooling systems, of which v RT can bring
Speaker 7: to the table. I also like Novartists, which is a
Speaker 7: healthcare company. So I'm a little all over the place,
Speaker 7: happy to go down any one of those roads for you.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I'm trying. I am trying to find ideas
Speaker 7: outside of what has been the hot trend because you
Speaker 7: want to get into other areas when you start to
Speaker 7: see dispersion of returns, which we have seen a little
Speaker 7: bit of, and you want to take advantage of opportunities
Speaker 7: to be a stock picker.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I guess kind of when you look at
Speaker 5: how you're playing AI. You mentioned Verdev. I covered them
Speaker 5: when they went public through a spac so you're looking
Speaker 5: at kind of these derivative plays when you're thinking about
Speaker 5: implementation of artificial intelligence and who can be the winners
Speaker 5: or losers.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm someone who's followed
Speaker 7: and loved in video and been talking about in VideA
Speaker 7: now for years, and it has served me well. You know,
Speaker 7: I've made a lot of money for clients and in
Speaker 7: that stock, and I'm still very much bullish on the stock.
Speaker 7: I think the trends are very favorable for the long term,
Speaker 7: and we're still very early in the AI cycle. That said,
Speaker 7: I don't think it can maintain the growth rate that
Speaker 7: it's had going forward.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 7: One hundred percent growth is still really impressive, but when
Speaker 7: you were at three hundred percent growth, it it feels
Speaker 7: a little disappointing. And and so I'm trying to find
Speaker 7: other ideas that will benefit from AI. Vertiv is one
Speaker 7: of them. I've talked a little bit about Cisco in
Speaker 7: the past, and i know they're all in the news
Speaker 7: with the announcement of their layoffs, but that's another player
Speaker 7: that has some second derivative exposure in AI as well,
Speaker 7: and trading very cheaply and obviously making so interesting, unattractive
Speaker 7: or unpopular decisions internally, but typically those decisions are made
Speaker 7: to improve overall financial performance. So that's another name, but
Speaker 7: it's not on my by list. But it isn't another
Speaker 7: like second derivative play And that's kind of what you
Speaker 7: have to look at at this point.
Speaker 3: Heyhana really appreciate it. That's such a great point about Cisco.
Speaker 3: Shana Sizzel joining us. She's president CEO of Benrionna Capital
Speaker 3: Management joining us.
Speaker 2: There you're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us
Speaker 2: live weekdays at ten am Eastern on Effo card Play
Speaker 2: and then Broud Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen
Speaker 2: on demand wherever you get your podcasts a watch us
Speaker 2: live on YouTube.
Speaker 3: I'm Alex Steel alongside Bailly Lipschutz. Paul Sweeney is setting
Speaker 3: himself at the beach today. This is Bloomberg Intelligence Radio.
Speaker 3: We bring you all the top news in business and
Speaker 3: finance and economics through our lens of our Bloomberg Intelligence analysts.
Speaker 3: They covered two thousand companies and one hundred and thirty
Speaker 3: industries all around the world. One topic we wanted to
Speaker 3: tackle today was empox. So the who declared a fast
Speaker 3: spreading empox outbreak in Africa a global health emergency as
Speaker 3: the agency seeks to contain the spread of the potentially
Speaker 3: deadly virus. WHO Director General sounded that alarm at a
Speaker 3: press conference on Wednesday.
Speaker 8: WHR has been working on the mpox outbreak in Africa
Speaker 8: and raising the alarm that this is something that should
Speaker 8: concern us all. The Emergency Committee met and advised me
Speaker 8: that in its view, the situation constitutes a publical emergency
Speaker 8: of international concern joining us.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: Sam Fazzelli, Bloomberg Intelligence director of Research for Global Industries
Speaker 3: and senior Forharmaceuticals analyst, is standing by. I hear you're
Speaker 3: in Bordeaux. I can only assume there's a lot of
Speaker 3: work happening there.
Speaker 9: Oh lots, Alex, lots. I haven't moved from this seat
Speaker 9: for the past seven hours.
Speaker 3: I mean, he could be telling the truth. Hey, Sam,
Speaker 3: when I have you? I assume when I heard the
Speaker 3: Empire's headline, I was like, I gotta get Sam on,
Speaker 3: give us the basics, like what is it and how
Speaker 3: dangerous is it?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 9: So, Alex, I think when the WHO Director General declares
Speaker 9: these emergencies, it's that that's already quite a significant and
Speaker 9: important milestone for a disease. And as you know, it
Speaker 9: has already there's been some an individual in Sweden apparently
Speaker 9: there's been diagnosed with it. So and as I said
Speaker 9: all along, infectious diseases are not about a country, they're
Speaker 9: not about a continent. They spread. That's the job of
Speaker 9: an infectious agent. So let's remember that as we talked
Speaker 9: through the rest of this conversation, and what we got
Speaker 9: here is not quite a replay of what we had
Speaker 9: two years ago, which was a slightly different version of
Speaker 9: this monkey pox virus that this is called empox now.
Speaker 9: And the virus comes in two flavors, Played one Clay
Speaker 9: two that kind of looks at it's based on its
Speaker 9: genomic structure, and this particular one is played one, which
Speaker 9: is normally less but often found. I hadn't you know.
Speaker 9: The last one was klay two. And this Klaye one
Speaker 9: has got a major chunk of its genome that's been
Speaker 9: taken out, and those who study these things have been
Speaker 9: writing that it has made it more transmissible through not
Speaker 9: just contact with us, for example, but also through sexual activity,
Speaker 9: which is not what klayed one previously had, but also
Speaker 9: just very close contact. So unlike COVID, if you remember,
Speaker 9: there were stories with COVID where you go into a
Speaker 9: restaurant and you sit diagonally across twenty thirty feet away,
Speaker 9: and you still have a risk of catching it because
Speaker 9: it gets blown around by the air conditioning. I don't
Speaker 9: think we're at that level with empocs yet. I don't
Speaker 9: with this particular clade. Won't be I can't be one
Speaker 9: hundred percent shore, but I don't think it's like that.
Speaker 9: You still do need the close contact, and that's where
Speaker 9: we're That's where my knowledge kind of ends at the minute.
Speaker 9: These viruses do have a nasty habit of bringing surprises
Speaker 9: to us.
Speaker 5: Well, Sam, that's my next question would be how quickly
Speaker 5: can this evolve in what is kind of that look
Speaker 5: like in terms of similarities or differences to as you
Speaker 5: mentioned the twenty twenty two empocs or something that's more
Speaker 5: kind of well not obviously in COVID.
Speaker 9: Yeah. Yeah, So twenty twenty two, we still had ninety
Speaker 9: five thousand people who were infected. It did become a
Speaker 9: major issue in many countries, so let's not forget that.
Speaker 9: And so far from the last count I heard about,
Speaker 9: there's been seventeen and a half thousand infections that have
Speaker 9: been documented in the regions that have reported it. So
Speaker 9: how far can this go? It all depends on that
Speaker 9: mode of transmission. It all depends on Remember the days
Speaker 9: we went from a standard if you want to call it,
Speaker 9: that coronavirus SARSCOBE two to the omicron variant, which had
Speaker 9: so many mutations that made it completely invisible to our
Speaker 9: immune systems, So everybody got another infection round. I'm pretty
Speaker 9: sure you do recall that last lockdown.
Speaker 3: I think it was, Oh, definitely remember all that, zam,
Speaker 3: don't you worry?
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I.
Speaker 9: Mean, it just feels like a really weird period of
Speaker 9: our lives. And so here we have something that if
Speaker 9: the rules are that it plays with us still the
Speaker 9: same as before, it does meet close contact, which means
Speaker 9: you should be able to avoid an infection if you're
Speaker 9: careful enough. The other elements, of course, is that we
Speaker 9: do have vaccines that do work. There is a six
Speaker 9: to seven hundred million stockpile of small pox vaccines around
Speaker 9: both the older generation and new generation, and there are
Speaker 9: two of r n A vaccines in development that could
Speaker 9: be sped up if needed. So we do know that
Speaker 9: vaccination helps, but it does have a higher mortality rate
Speaker 9: standard to even the people who get it that are
Speaker 9: that's not just like elderly people, which was mostly a
Speaker 9: COVID issue than COVID did.
Speaker 3: So it can kill more and it can kill all
Speaker 3: different ranges, not just say the elderly. But we do
Speaker 3: have the vaccine. What about a treatment.
Speaker 9: There was a treatment that actually was being studied by
Speaker 9: a complet called Siga and that just failed in trials
Speaker 9: only two days ago, and it was being tested in
Speaker 9: the Congo and it was being against klayte one. But
Speaker 9: the good, the silver sider, the silver lining of that
Speaker 9: report is that the mortality rate that they came out
Speaker 9: with was lower than what people talk about. People talk
Speaker 9: about three to six percent, but in that trial, mortality
Speaker 9: like not small one and a half one point seven
Speaker 9: percent from what I have read. So that does give
Speaker 9: you a little flavor as to maybe it's not as bad,
Speaker 9: but it's obviously one point six one point seven percent
Speaker 9: is too pretty awful.
Speaker 5: And Sam, how kind of quickly can some of those
Speaker 5: vaccinations be deployed? Is that something that's already playing out
Speaker 5: right now? Is that being centered primarily where the heart
Speaker 5: of the outbreak is is in Congo.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it doesn't sound like it from the latest news
Speaker 9: real force that I've seen that Bloomberg has been doing
Speaker 9: a great job of talking about that. Apparently there've been
Speaker 9: discussions because this has been not this is not something
Speaker 9: that happened overnight. It's been going on at least in
Speaker 9: the Congo unfortunately for a few months, and that there's
Speaker 9: been discussions between groups that provide the vaccines and the Congo,
Speaker 9: and they hadn't got to a the last I read
Speaker 9: to a to an agreement of getting those vacks nations
Speaker 9: out and getting it to people. Let's not forget we've
Speaker 9: learned this. Anywhere you go, having vaccine is not equal
Speaker 9: to people having it in their arms. The more difficult
Speaker 9: a country, a region, reaching people in rural areas, et cetera,
Speaker 9: is cold chain necessities, et cetera. The more difficult that is,
Speaker 9: the fewer people will actually be vaccinated. So that's two
Speaker 9: different things here. But I'm confident that we can have
Speaker 9: enough vaccines to ring fence at least infections and areas
Speaker 9: and travelers. But in order to go into the hundreds
Speaker 9: of millions of doses, I think we need the m
Speaker 9: RNAs to get going.
Speaker 3: It's such a good point, Sam, that's why you're the best. Hey,
Speaker 3: Before we let you go. I just want to hit
Speaker 3: you on this headline here. Pfizer and Beyontech their flu
Speaker 3: covid vaccine failed.
Speaker 9: Well, talking about the mRNA here, it's a complicated thing.
Speaker 9: It was a combination mRNA is against three different types
Speaker 9: of flu and covid, and it failed against one of
Speaker 9: the flu variants, which is the or strains, which is
Speaker 9: the influenza B virus in that setting. So they need
Speaker 9: to go back to the growing board and see why.
Speaker 9: That is what is complicated here and we need to
Speaker 9: understand it better. Is that they had a success in
Speaker 9: phase two, then they took the same thing into phase
Speaker 9: three and it failed against the B influenza B. I've
Speaker 9: been out. I've asked a company whether that's because they
Speaker 9: think that the strain changed during the trial. It's possible
Speaker 9: to remember flu is one of those nasty ones that
Speaker 9: changes all the time, and the change matters a lot more,
Speaker 9: I would say, than covid does. So that is what
Speaker 9: that's what happened here, and it does give them a
Speaker 9: disadvantage versus Moderna which had a successful trial.
Speaker 3: Such good perspective, Sam, you are totally the best. Sam Fazelli,
Speaker 3: Boomberg Intelligence, Director of Research, for Global Industries and Senior
Speaker 3: Pharmaceutical joining us from Bordeaux. I look forward to the picture, Sam,
Speaker 3: I require some of that just to see because do
Speaker 3: you make your own wine there? Like do you have
Speaker 3: Oh he's gone, he already left, already, he's back to
Speaker 3: the vineyard. Ah. Same, thanks Sam, I really appreciate that one.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
Speaker 2: weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play and Android
Speaker 2: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen
Speaker 2: live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station,
Speaker 2: Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Intelligence Radio. We are broadcasting to live from Interactive
Speaker 3: Broker Studio right here in Midtown Manhattan. Also check us
Speaker 3: out on YouTube. But you know, Bailey doesn't have his
Speaker 3: bro vesque, so the appeal for that is a little
Speaker 3: bit less. A Bay Lipshaltz in for Paul Sweeney. So, Bailey,
Speaker 3: I'm an energy geek nerd. I've been covering energy commodities
Speaker 3: for like seventeen and a half years, so welcome. So naturally,
Speaker 3: every once in a while I have an energy guest
Speaker 3: on and this one's actually quite interesting. So it's a
Speaker 3: company called Sigma Lithium. It's ticker SGML trades about nine
Speaker 3: dollars fifty cents a share. It's been a one billion
Speaker 3: dollar company. It's a Canadian company, but it minds in
Speaker 3: Brazil lithium obviously, hence the name, and the idea is
Speaker 3: to basically make green lithium. Can you make it cost
Speaker 3: competitively and how do you bring your own cost down? Now,
Speaker 3: lithium is used in pretty much everything, but in particular
Speaker 3: the batteries for electric vehicles, So if we want to
Speaker 3: make the transition to green, lithium is something that we're
Speaker 3: going to need. But how you green that is definitely
Speaker 3: the question. So joining us now is Anna Cabral. She's
Speaker 3: Signal Lithium co chair and CEO. The company just reported
Speaker 3: earnings yesterday. What stood out to me really was reduced
Speaker 3: cash costs by twenty two percent an increase in margins there.
Speaker 3: So we wanted to get some more insight into how
Speaker 3: all this works, how it is to go green and
Speaker 3: be sustainable mining lithium, and can you sell it for
Speaker 3: what kind of profit? Anna joins us now, Anna, thank
Speaker 3: you so much for joining us. Can you just talk
Speaker 3: us through for those of you who are on energy geeks,
Speaker 3: what the company does and what it's hoping.
Speaker 2: To do.
Speaker 9: Absolutely well.
Speaker 10: Sigma has been is a twelve year old company. We've
Speaker 10: been operating for over a year now. We're celebrating a
Speaker 10: year of shipments, consistent monthly shipments and we ship an
Speaker 10: equivalent amount. We ship approximately two hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 10: tons to two hundred and seven thousand tons annually, twenty
Speaker 10: two thousand tons monthly, which translated into a chemical measure,
Speaker 10: is the equivalent of approximately thirty eight thousand tons of
Speaker 10: letum carbonate equivalent. So that's what we do. This is
Speaker 10: who we are. We have shoe operations. They're very distinctive,
Speaker 10: but they're vertically integrated. We have a mine the mines
Speaker 10: letium rock, and then that rock gets fed into an
Speaker 10: industrial pre chemical plant where we process that rock into
Speaker 10: letium materials and at that we are producing zero carbon lithium.
Speaker 10: And so we're the only company in the world that
Speaker 10: produces zero carbon litium in scale.
Speaker 5: And how as Alex pointed out, margins look great at
Speaker 5: least according to the results, and cash costs down twenty
Speaker 5: two percent.
Speaker 10: How does that.
Speaker 5: Play out I'm just thinking, if I'm a car manufacturer,
Speaker 5: I probably want the cheapest lithium I can get my
Speaker 5: hands on because I also want to make money.
Speaker 9: That's the whole point.
Speaker 10: There isn't a green premium. We have been able to
Speaker 10: premiumize our product based on different attributes. The product has
Speaker 10: a chemical and a physical characteristic which brings actual measurable
Speaker 10: cost savings of twenty to thirty percent to the supply chain.
Speaker 10: Either the car maker or the battery maker, whomever owns
Speaker 10: the product within the supply chain will benefit from those
Speaker 10: cost savings. That's the basis for premiumization, and we're very
Speaker 10: let's say reasonable about it. We have a commercially win
Speaker 10: commercial win win approach where we take about ten percent
Speaker 10: of that and then the client takes about twenty to
Speaker 10: twenty center of that. So is a win win situation.
Speaker 10: But there's no green premium. Everybody wants it, nobody wants
Speaker 10: to pay.
Speaker 3: For it exactly. That's one hundred percent what I keep
Speaker 3: hearing about as well. So what enabled you to do
Speaker 3: this sustainably in this area? Like is it? Can you
Speaker 3: replicate this anywhere in any mind? And then uh, and
Speaker 3: then concentration facility or was there something specific to this?
Speaker 10: There are number of factors. The first factor, let's talk
Speaker 10: about scope one. When you when you think about the
Speaker 10: common load of a product, can you need to think
Speaker 10: about what goes inside your operations, which is scope one.
Speaker 10: And then the kind of power energy used to to
Speaker 10: run these operations, which is what we call scope two.
Speaker 10: And then the effect that your product is going to
Speaker 10: have in a supply chain, which is scope three. Right,
Speaker 10: which is we're all in guess for example, has a problem.
Speaker 10: So when we when we made this investment here uh
Speaker 10: which which which was now twelve years ago, the objective
Speaker 10: was to reach eventually a point where we will deliver
Speaker 10: the most sustainable litum in the world. We ended up
Speaker 10: going zero CAB, but we started with scope one, meaning
Speaker 10: we designed when we chose technologies and a processing method
Speaker 10: that were not aggressive to the environment, that we're not
Speaker 10: going to leave a serious, unabatable carbon footprints such as
Speaker 10: tailing dams. We have zero tailing dams because we developed
Speaker 10: a dry stacking module. Water. The use of water in
Speaker 10: our industry is highly problematic. We use sewage water and
Speaker 10: we recite, we recycle that water. So we have what
Speaker 10: we call recirculation, reuse of sewage water, so we don't
Speaker 10: use fresh water, so it's zero fresh water, right, So
Speaker 10: these were elements, and then we chose separation methods that
Speaker 10: do not use toxic chemicals, so we have another zero,
Speaker 10: which is zero toxic chemicals. So this all happens in
Speaker 10: that in the stroke QUOD. So then you moved to
Speaker 10: the mind, what is the responsible of carbon footprint inside
Speaker 10: the gate scope? One on the mind is mainly diesel
Speaker 10: and nitrates in explosives a NFO. So we went out
Speaker 10: to minimize that trying to add bland biodiesel, biofuels, biodiesel
Speaker 10: with diesel, and then using electronic triggers electronic explosives to
Speaker 10: minimize the user nitrate, so we obtained a pretty sizable reduction.
Speaker 10: The result of it, right unabated, like the result of
Speaker 10: all of that, after going through the hard to obey
Speaker 10: after all of it, is that we ended up with
Speaker 10: inside one, meaning point twenty six tons of carbon per
Speaker 10: tonnel material. So we did all that work and we
Speaker 10: got to that low level, which meant that then we
Speaker 10: could go out and offset the rest with credits because
Speaker 10: we are inside one, which meant we had to do
Speaker 10: a huge effort to be inside one. Comparing to our
Speaker 10: piers in these salars in South America is typically five
Speaker 10: tons of carbon per ton, and we were a point
Speaker 10: two six and other minds in other parts of the
Speaker 10: world is fifteen tons of carbon in certain high cost
Speaker 10: minds in Asia it's fourty five tons. So uh, it
Speaker 10: wasn't enormous amount of work on Scope one, so scope
Speaker 10: too though, Yeah, no.
Speaker 3: Go ahead, We only have about the thirty forty seconds left.
Speaker 3: But I do want to know if you can replicate
Speaker 3: this elsewhere.
Speaker 10: Well, that's the point. I mean Scope two. We were
Speaker 10: blessed with the grid in Brazil, which meant that, you know,
Speaker 10: we have access to abundant available renewable energy, so that
Speaker 10: also contributes a lot. Because our Scope two is green,
Speaker 10: it's one hundred percent renewable. So we ended up with
Speaker 10: a situation that's hybrid. Could we replicate Yes, we can
Speaker 10: replicate Scope one, but then we will need to plug
Speaker 10: it into a renewable source. So that's kind of the
Speaker 10: uniqueness of what we do. He is a combination of technology.
Speaker 10: We have a highly benign a grid.
Speaker 3: Well, Ana, we really appreciate it. It's a really interesting
Speaker 3: story because so often we hear about how this just
Speaker 3: isn't possible, and it's nice to get that success story
Speaker 3: as well. Look forward to seeing your growth as well.
Speaker 3: On a cabral Sigma Lithium co chair and CEO of
Speaker 3: joining us on Sustainable Lithium. You good, none, Bailly, you
Speaker 3: got it like you to feel.
Speaker 5: I learned a lot, I will say, though I'm a
Speaker 5: big markets watcher as you know. Uh, Sigma lithium about
Speaker 5: a year ago north of thirty bucks right now trade
Speaker 5: and round nine.
Speaker 3: I mean it's lithium prices they've just been I mean
Speaker 3: that's the thing. It's super cyclical. And look at what's
Speaker 3: happening with the auto demand. At the end of the day.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
Speaker 2: weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play and Android
Speaker 2: Auto with the Bloomberg Business Act. You can also listen
Speaker 2: live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station
Speaker 2: Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 3: We have a really interesting guest coming up now. So
Speaker 3: Appian is an American cloud computing and enterprise software company.
Speaker 3: It's headquartered in McLean, Virginia. It's been around for quite
Speaker 3: a long time, and the CEO and founder, Matt Calkins
Speaker 3: of Appian joins us. Now, hey, Matt, just dumb question.
Speaker 3: What does your company do.
Speaker 1: Hey, Alex, We do processes. You know, processes make the
Speaker 1: world go around. Every organization is composed of its unique processes,
Speaker 1: and we automate those processes, We orchestrate them, and we
Speaker 1: make them better over time using our expertise in most
Speaker 1: of all our software.
Speaker 5: And how do you guys fit into kind of this
Speaker 5: AI wave? When I look at you know a number
Speaker 5: of stocks that have continued to rip and move higher,
Speaker 5: It doesn't seem like Appian has been caught up in
Speaker 5: that shift.
Speaker 1: Well, we're not the highest profile member of the AI wave,
Speaker 1: but we're really pertinent to it. You see, every process
Speaker 1: is made up of work getting done, and some of
Speaker 1: that work is done by AI. So we've been selling
Speaker 1: AI for nearly a decade and we have a unique
Speaker 1: angle on it. Our angle is that AI should work
Speaker 1: with private data.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't as a user, You should not have to
Speaker 1: divulge your data at all to an AI algorithm that
Speaker 1: you don't own. You should preserve the sanctity of your
Speaker 1: information and still be able to get great AI results.
Speaker 1: So we work with kind of a virtual database to
Speaker 1: allow that instead of asking that our customers give us
Speaker 1: their data.
Speaker 3: So that would totally fly in like the large language
Speaker 3: models that we're dealing with now, or they sort of
Speaker 3: sour uce all this public data or so pay Reddit
Speaker 3: to get their data. That's not that would be very different.
Speaker 1: Well it's okay, yeah, I'm not talking about how you
Speaker 1: build the generic AI model. That's what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: You first training a generic model. I'm talking about how
Speaker 1: organizations like corporations are frequently asked to train an AI
Speaker 1: model after it's already incorporated all that public data. But
Speaker 1: train an AI model, which has certain downsides. It means
Speaker 1: that you've made an investment in a model you don't own.
Speaker 1: It means you've divulged your data and that that could
Speaker 1: be risky. It means you can only get one form
Speaker 1: of answer back from that algorithm, because no matter what
Speaker 1: security clearance the question has, you've all got the same
Speaker 1: base of data to ask against. It means it's hard
Speaker 1: to retrain that model. There's a lot of disadvantages to
Speaker 1: training an AI model, and we would like to find
Speaker 1: we do find a way to get great GENAI results
Speaker 1: without that training step.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 6: Do you guys have any marquee partnerships?
Speaker 5: It just feels like in terms of kind of this
Speaker 5: AI boom you mentioned that you guys have been operating
Speaker 5: in the space for quite some time has drawn a
Speaker 5: lot of money from Microsoft, Google, you name it.
Speaker 1: For sure. We work with all of them, but we're
Speaker 1: AWS centric, so that's our primary partnership and it has
Speaker 1: been for a couple of decades now. We're also one
Speaker 1: of their early pioneers with the clip.
Speaker 3: What do you think AI regulation should be and where
Speaker 3: is it now?
Speaker 1: It's nowhere near where it should be, that's the answer.
Speaker 3: We have a regulation at all?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should have some. We should have some to
Speaker 1: establish a a fair and well understood set of ground
Speaker 1: rules so that we can all compete without uncertainty. That
Speaker 1: would be ideal. But today AI regulation is mostly about fear.
Speaker 1: It's mostly about stopping AI from doing something catastrophic, to
Speaker 1: quote the recent California proposal catastrophic instead of worrying about
Speaker 1: bread and butter concerns. Is AI infringing on people's intellectual property?
Speaker 1: As you make the next model? I think we're much
Speaker 1: too driven by fear and too little driven by just
Speaker 1: creating a fair playing field for all participants in this
Speaker 1: emerging industry, which really what we need, less uncertainty, less
Speaker 1: divergent regulation. Depending on where you're doing business, it's this
Speaker 1: in Colorado, it's that in Europe, etc. It would be
Speaker 1: better to just come up with a standard, and that
Speaker 1: standard should address the first harms that AI is committing,
Speaker 1: which are harms of a breach of intellectual property, rather
Speaker 1: than the eventual hypothetical harms that most legislation seems targeted
Speaker 1: to address.
Speaker 6: And how would that actually, in your view, come to fruition.
Speaker 5: It just feels like the kind of climate and DC
Speaker 5: maybe wouldn't be as conducive to actually implementing some of
Speaker 5: these practices at this point in time.
Speaker 1: Look, I live near DC and it's paralyzed right now.
Speaker 1: We're all thinking about the election. But I do have
Speaker 1: a proposal. I think that we should begin with a
Speaker 1: few broad statements like a bill Wright's almost around AI.
Speaker 1: I think AI should disclose its data sources. That would
Speaker 1: raise everybody's visibility into what's going on in AI and
Speaker 1: allow us to better figure out where the value is
Speaker 1: truly coming from. It's coming from the data more than
Speaker 1: we realize. And then for private data, privately identifiable information,
Speaker 1: and copyright information, all of that should be used with
Speaker 1: permission and compensation. So if we started with just that
Speaker 1: full disclosure and permission and compensation for all private information,
Speaker 1: I think we would have a fair baseline for how
Speaker 1: you're allowed to build an AI algorithm. You'd have good transparency,
Speaker 1: we'd be better understand what this technology really means. And
Speaker 1: then also it we'd actually be helping the industry become
Speaker 1: more valuable because we'd shift it out of the current
Speaker 1: race for information into something far more important, the race
Speaker 1: for trust.
Speaker 3: Matt, that is your day job. That is the job
Speaker 3: that you've had for a long time. But you also
Speaker 3: have a side gig, and apparently you're super big into
Speaker 3: board gaming as am I I feel you on that.
Speaker 3: But you also make up your own board games. Is
Speaker 3: this true? Because I am so jealous?
Speaker 4: I do.
Speaker 1: I love it, and I've been designing board games for
Speaker 1: a couple of decades now, and I've got several in print,
Speaker 1: and it's a great pleasure to see other people playing them.
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite things.
Speaker 3: Do you have like a favorite like? Is there one
Speaker 3: game either that you play that's not yours, and then
Speaker 3: the game that you created.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's hard for me to pick favorites amongst my own,
Speaker 1: but I guess I'd have to point to Sekigahara, which
Speaker 1: is still rated one of the top war games ever written,
Speaker 1: even though it was written more than a decade ago.
Speaker 1: That was a real pleasure to write. And my latest
Speaker 1: is called Chariots here about racing chariots by making simple
Speaker 1: card combinations. My favorites to play that I did not
Speaker 1: write would have to include power Grid, Acquire and Automobile.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know, power Grid.
Speaker 6: I need to get that.
Speaker 2: I just put on.
Speaker 6: I'll be the dumbest person in this conversation. Are these
Speaker 6: thinking games? Do I have to be like ready to
Speaker 6: have to think?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'll do better if you think for sure. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's the fun of it. It gives me something to
Speaker 1: think about, a competition to engage your mind.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's a barely answer that question.
Speaker 5: Every day when we answer the anchor, do I have
Speaker 5: to think?
Speaker 3: Well, normally, I mean that's a TVD.
Speaker 6: To be honest, I'm a Yazi fan. I like to
Speaker 6: you know, you roll the die, you pick out the die.
Speaker 6: It's pretty straightforward strategy.
Speaker 1: There's some decisions, and if there weren't, it wouldn't be fun.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm totally I'm totally okay, I'm gonna check
Speaker 3: those out. That was really great. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Matt Calkins, thank you so much. A founder and CEO
Speaker 3: of Appy and joining us Nasdaq ticker is a p P.
Speaker 3: And wait, so you guys don't like have parties in
Speaker 3: Jersey with board games?
Speaker 6: Okay? So I love board games, so I didn't. I
Speaker 6: didn't want to downplay it. Okay, but I like Yati
Speaker 6: you play? Were you part of that code games? I
Speaker 6: guess yeah, maybe not. Board games is code names. It's
Speaker 6: a card game.
Speaker 3: It's it's a card Yeah, I don't know. It's a
Speaker 3: good question. Okay, code name.
Speaker 6: So you like the code name names, Yazi, Yati? Have
Speaker 6: you played Chameleon?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 6: Chameleons a lot of fun? Okay, it's good. I know
Speaker 6: you're not like, I don't know. If you go to breweries,
Speaker 6: it's good brewery game.
Speaker 3: It's a good brewery game. Okay. I mean, my daughter's
Speaker 3: not quite old enough for that, but it's a fair point.
Speaker 3: I'm a Katon person, so that's see.
Speaker 6: I haven't put in the effort to learn how to
Speaker 6: play it.
Speaker 3: Every once you do play oh man, Yeah, okay, the
Speaker 3: first time is a slog and it's confusing and then
Speaker 3: it might break up your marriage. But once I get
Speaker 3: past that point, it's so good. We're also playing Pandemic Legacy.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. Anyway, we digress. Bailey's looking at me like.
Speaker 5: I don't know what you're talking about. But JT's gonna
Speaker 5: come over. We'll play some Gaitan and build some roos.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 3: I see what he's doing, and he's like, come over
Speaker 3: and then fix my leak or whatever.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast, available on Apples, Spotify,
Speaker 2: and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live each
Speaker 2: weekday ten am to noon Eastern on Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app.
Speaker 2: You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube
Speaker 2: and always on the Bloomberg terminal